To be simple is no small matter.

It is an excellent habit to look at things as so many symbols.

Stupidity is an immovable object: you can't try to attack it wiithout being broken by it.

Better to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isn’t that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides, who reads? And what do they read? And what do they admire?

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.

Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.

That man has missed something who has never left a brothel at sunrise feeling like throwing himself into the river out of pure disgust.