Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.

At one time or another, almost every politician needs an honest man so badly that, like a ravenous wolf, he breaks into a sheep-fold: not to devour the ram he has stolen, however, but rather to conceal himself behind its wooly back.

Life without music is only error, exhaustion, exile... Indeed, there is nothing that concerns me more than the fate of music.

There is no more dreary or more repulsive creature than the man who has evaded his genius.

One who is publicly honest about himself ends up by priding himself somewhat on this honesty: for he knows only too well why he is honest-for the same reasons another person prefers illusion and dissimulation.

Something might be true while being harmful and dangerous in the highest degree. Indeed, it might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who know it completely would perish, in which case the strength of a spirit should be measured according to how much of the 'truth' one could still barely endure- or to put it more clearly, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified.

Yet where is your inner value when you no longer know what it is to breathe freely; when you no longer have freedom over your own selves