God created woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment-but many other things ceased as well!

Those you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster.

There are the spiritually consumptive ones: hardly are they born when they begin to die, and long for doctrines of lassitude and renunciation.

A refined soul is distressed to know that someone owes it thanks; a crude soul, to know that it owes someone thanks.

The coward does not know what it means to be alone: an enemy is always standing behind his chair.

An artist chooses his subjects: that is the way he praises.

Again and again I am brought up against it, and again and again I resist it: I don't want to believe it, even though it is almost palpable: the vast majority lack an intellectual conscience; indeed, it often seems to me that to demand such a thing is to be in the most populous cities as solitary as in the desert.