God is only a word dreamed up to explain the world

Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that's the one they invented when they got tired of all the others.

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. I've never sought it (though I desire it) and seek it less and less.

Stupidity consists in wanting to reach conclusions. We are a thread, and we want to know the whole cloth.

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

Noble characters and pure affections and happy scenes are very comforting things. They're a refuge from life's disillusionments.

As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the plastic arts? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky.