I am afraid that old women are more skeptical in their most secret heart of hearts than any man: they believe in the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and all virtue and profundity is to them merely a veil over this "truth," a most welcome veil over a pudendum--and so a matter of decency and modesty, and nothing else.

Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.

For men are not equal: thus speaks justice.

He who possesseth little is so much the less possessed. Blessed be moderate poverty!

What is it that endowed things with meaning, value, significance? The creating heart, which desired, and, out of its desire, created. It created joy and woe. It wanted to satiate itself with woe. We must take all the suffering that has been endured by men and animals upon ourselves and affirm it, and possess a goal in which it acquires reason.

As an artist one has no home in Europe except in Paris.

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.