Melancholy is a sensual pleasure that is deliberately provoked. How many people shut themselves away to make themselves sadder, or to weep beside a stream, or choose a sentimental book! We are constantly building and unbuilding ourselves.

The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.

The most important thing in the world is to hold your soul aloft.

Women want you to deceive them: they force you to, and if you resist, they blame you.

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

Of all lies, art is the least untrue.