Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.

One who is unassuming in dealing with people exhibits his arrogance all the more strongly in dealing with things (city, state, society, age, mankind). That is his revenge.

Verily, I do not like them, the merciful who feel blessed in their pity: they are lacking too much in shame. If I must pity, at least I do not want it known; and if I do pity, it is preferably from a distance.

Women and egoistic artists entertain a feeling towards science that is something composed of envy and sentimentality.

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.

To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.

Modern marriage has lost its meaning--consequently it is being abolished.