The love of one sole being is a barbarism; for it will be employed to the detriment of all the rest. So too the love of God.

Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself.

Immature is the love of the youth, and immature his hatred of man and earth. His mind and the wings of his spirit are still tied down and heavy.

Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.

Some people appear to be more meager in talent than they are, just because the tasks they set themselves are always too great.

Writers ought to be regarded as wrongdoers who deserve to be acquitted or pardoned only in the rarest cases: that would be a way to keep books from getting out of hand.

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