I constantly saw the false and the bad, and finally the absurd and the senseless, standing in universal admiration and honour.

Nothing in life gives a man so much courage as the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other people regard him with favor; because it means that everyone joins to give him help and protection, which is an infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than anything he can do himself.

The actual life of a thought lasts only until it reaches the point of speech...As soon as our thinking has found words it ceases to be sincere...When it begins to exist in others it ceases to live in us, just as the child severs itself from its mother when it enters into its own existence.

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

I constantly saw the false and the bad, and finally the absurd and the senseless, standing in universal admiration and honour.

Vulgar people take huge delight in the faults and follies of great men.

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.