A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.

You want to make him interested in you? Then pretend to be embarrassed in his presence-

In Russia there is an emigration of intelligence: émigrés cross the frontier in order to read and to write good books. But in doing so they contribute to making their fatherland, abandoned by spirit, into the gaping jaws of Asia that would like to swallow our little Europe.

If you look long enough into the void, the void begins to look back through you.

In affability there is no hatred of men, but for that very reason there is all too much contempt for men.

It is the powerful who know how to honour, it is their art, their domain for invention.

No one dies of fatal truths nowadays: there are too many antidotes.