A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.

The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence.

Writing history is like drinking an ocean and pissing a cupful.

The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.

You can't find the soul with a scalpel.

There was an air of indifference about them, a calm produced by the gratification of every passion; and through their manners were suave, one could sense beneath them that special brutality which comes from the habit of breaking down half-hearted resistances that keep one fit and tickle one’s vanity—the handling of blooded horses, the pursuit of loose women.

And indeed, what is better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is buring?