Different types of dangerous lives-You have no idea what you are living through; you rush through life as if you were drunk and now and then fall down some staircase. But thanks to your drunkenness you never break a limb; your muscles are too relaxed and your brain too benighted for you to find the stones of these stairs as hard as we do.

To have to fight the instincts - that is the definition of decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness equals instinct.

Many find their heart when they have lost their head.

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

Marriage was contrived for ordinary people, for people who are capable of neither great love nor great friendship, which is to say, for most people--but also for those exceptionally rare ones who are capable of love as well as of friendship.

We must repay goodness and wickedness: but why exactly to the person who has done us a good or a wicked turn?

Foolish is my happiness, and foolish things will it speak: it is still too young—so have patience with it!