There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.

History is a novel that has been lived, a novel is history that could have been.

Barbarism is needed every four or five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilization.

I have always derived indescribable pleasure from leading a decent woman to the edge of sin and leaving her there to live between the temptation and the fear of that sin.

A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.

Laughter is the mind's intonation. There are ways of laughing which have the sound of counterfeit coins.

She is unable to dream, think or love. In a woman, poetry never comes naturally, but always as the result of education. Only the woman of the world is a woman; the rest are simply females.