The enemies of living life; outdated little liberals, afraid of their own independence; lackeys of thought, enemies of the person and freedom, decrepit preachers of carrion and rot! What do they have: gray heads, the golden mean, the most abject and philistine giftlessness, envious equality, equality without personal dignity, equality as understood by a lackey or a Frenchman of the year ninety-three...And scoundrells, above all, scoundrels, scoundrels everywhere!

Sometimes a man is intensely, even passionately, attached to suffering — that is a fact.

Speak of a wolf and you see his tail!

Civilization merely develops man's capacity for a greater variety of sensations, and ... absolutely nothing else.

And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without bread, and it only cannot live without beauty, for then there would be nothing at all to do in the world! The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here. Science itself would not stand for a minute without beauty

There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.

In every idea of genius or in every new human idea, or, more simply still, in every serious human idea born in anyone's brain, there is something that cannot possibly be conveyed to others.