And this do I call immaculate perception of all things: to want nothing else from them, but to be allowed to lie before them as a mirror with a hundred facets.

One hears but one does not seek; one takes -- one does not ask who gives; a thought flashes up like lightning, it comes of necessity and unfalteringly formed.

A woman's pity, which is talkative, carries the sick person's bed to the public marketplace.

Many writers are neither spirit nor wine, but rather spirits- of-wine: they can catch fire, and then they give off heat.

Let man fear woman when she loves: then she makes any sacrifice, and everything else seems without value to her

Sometimes it just takes stronger eyeglasses to cure those who are in love--and someone with the ability to imagine a face or a figure twenty years older might perhaps pass through life quite undisturbed.

An important species of pleasure, and therewith the source of morality, arises out of habit.