Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate; a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.

Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose.

There cannot be a personal God without a pessimistic religion. As soon as there is a personal God he is a disappointing God.

Words today are like the shells and rope of seaweed which a child brings home glistening from the beach and which in an hour have lost their luster.

The only happy talkers are dandies who extract pleasure from the very perishability of their material and who would not be able to tolerate the isolation of all other forms of composition; for most good talkers, when they have run down, are miserable; they know that they have betrayed themselves, that they have taken material which should have a life of its own, to dispense it in noises upon the air.

The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence, -- luxury, skepticism, weariness and superstition, -- are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.

How many books did Renoir write on how to paint?