Although you have so far demonstrated little faith in my ability to pay, I yet hope to demonstrate that I am somebody who pays his debts-for example, to you.

Pity is the most agreeable feeling among those who have little pride and no prospects of great conquests.

There are two types of genius; one which above all begets and wants to beget, and another which prefers being fertilized and giving birth.

The truth is ugly: we have art so as not to perish from the truth.

The greater the obstacle the more glory in overcoming it. - What does not destroy makes me stronger.

All philosophers make the common mistake of taking contemporary man as their starting point and of trying, through an analysis of him, to[21] reach a conclusion. "Man" involuntarily presents himself to them as an aeterna veritas as a passive element in every hurly-burly, as a fixed standard of things. Yet everything uttered by the philosopher on the subject of man is, in the last resort, nothing more than a piece of testimony concerning man during a very limited period of time.

Stupidity in a woman is unfeminine.