Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

Before you take anything away, you must have something better to put in its place.

Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other.

The law of simplicity and naïveté applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is most sublime.

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means progress.

Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.