The word realist means nothing to me, because I would subordinate reality to temperament. Give me what is true and I applaud; but give me what is individual and alive and I applaud even more.

Man's highest duty is to protect animals from cruelty.

Inability, human incapacity, is the only boundary to an art.

The conclusion does not belong to the artist.

They dared not peer down into their own natures, down into the feverish confusion that filled their minds with a kind of dense, acrid mist.

Let us eat, drink and satisfy our coarse appetites, but let us keep our souls sacred and apart.

It was always the same; other people gave up loving before she did. They got spoilt, or else they went away; in any case, they were partly to blame. Why did it happen so? She herself never changed; when she loved anyone, it was for life. She could not understand desertion; it was something so huge, so monstrous that the notion of it made her little heart break.