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

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.

Read in order to live.

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.

[T]he truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.

What is glory? It is to have a lot of nonsense talked about you.