History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.

Men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous.

One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.

Artists have no less talents than ever, their taste, their vision, their sentiment are often interesting; they are mighty in their independence and feeble only in their works.

All beauties are to be honored, but only one embraced.

What brings enlightenment is experience, in the sad sense of this word--the pressure of hard facts and unintelligible troubles, making a man rub his eyes in his waking dream, and put two and two together. Enlightenment is cold water.

The strongest feelings assigned to the conscience are not moral feelings at all; they express merely physical antipathies.