To hope is to contradict the future.

If you lack the power to demoralize yourself along with the age, to go as low and as far, do not complain of being misunderstood by it.

It is enough for me to hear someone talk sincerely about ideals, about the future, about philosophy, to hear him say “we" with a certain inflection of assurance, to hear him invoke "others" and regard himself as their interpreter - for me to consider him my enemy.

Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.

The wise man, the sage, is hostile to the new. Disabused, he abdicates: that is his form of protest.

The capital phenomenon, the most catastrophic disaster, is uninterrupted sleeplessness, that nothingness without release.

Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection. This is why with Chopin we feel so little like gods.