Wisdom disguises our wounds; it teaches us how to bleed in secret.

Discretion is deadly to genius; ruinous to talent.

When every man has realized that his birth is a defeat, existence, endurable at last, will seem like the day after a surrender, like the relief and the repose of the conquered.

What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?

We are afraid of the enormity of the possible.

Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart's drama and the negative meaning of history.

Glory - once achieved, what is it worth?