Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word. They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty, duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.

What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love.

What is the beautiful, if not the impossible.

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

Talent is long patience.

One's existence should be in two parts: one should live like a bourgeois and think like a demigod.

Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.