Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

She did not believe that things could remain the same in different places, and since the portion of her life that lay behind her had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better.

But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt comes off in our hands.

Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion.

A thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.

The rage for wanting to conclude is one of the most deadly and most fruitless manias to befall humanity. Each religion and each philosophy has pretended to have God to itself, to measure the infinite, and to know the recipe for happiness. What arrogance and what nonsense! I see, to the contrary, that the greatest geniuses and the greatest works have never concluded.

One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and to not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.