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

For some men, the stronger their desire, the more difficult it is for them to act.

Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.

I sometimes feel a great ennui, profound emptiness, doubts which sneer in my face in the midst of the most spontaneous satisfactions. Well, I would not exchange all that for anything, because it seems to me, in my conscience, that I am doing my duty, that I am obeying a superior fatality, that I am following the Good and that I am in the Right.

The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree. Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.

But an infinity of passions can be contained in a minute, like a crowd in a tiny space.

Do not imagine you can exorcise what oppresses you in life by giving vent to it in art.