There is one thing on earth more terrible than English music, and that is English painting.

I do not know the meaning of my sadness; there is an old fairy tale that I cannot get out of my mind.

Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you. Oh, what lies there are in kisses!

I will not say that women have no character; rather, they have a new one every day.

The negro king desired to be portrayed as white. But do not laugh at the poor African; for every man is but another negro king, and would like to appear in a color different from that with which Fate has bedaubed him.

Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but less by assimilation than by friction.

At noon I feel as though I could devour all the elephants of Hindostan, and then pick my teeth with the spire of Strasburg cathedral; in the evening I become so sentimental that I would fain drink up the Milky Way without reflecting how indigestible I should find the little fixed stars, and by night there is the Devil himself broke loose in my head and no mistake.