I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.

What terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people.

That's always the way with fanatics; they cross themselves at the tavern and throw stones at the temple.

I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man. An unattractive man. I think that my liver hurts.

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.

For example, I'm terribly proud. I'm as mistrustful and as sensitive as a hunchback or a dwarf; but, in truth, I've experienced some moments when if someone had slapped my face, I might even have been grateful for it. I'm being serious. I probably would have been able to derive a peculiar sort of pleasure from it-the pleasure of despair, naturally, but the most intense pleasures occur in despair, especially when you're very acutely aware of the hopelessness of your own predicament.

She looked much younger than her age, indeed, which is almost always the case with women who retain serenity of spirit, sensitiveness and pure sincere warmth of heart to old age.