I have followed after the truth, across this windy planet upon which every person is nourished by one or another lie.

I am Manuel. I have lived in the loneliness which is common to all men, but the difference is that I have known it. Now it is necessary for me, as it is necessary for all men, to die in this same loneliness, and I know that there is no help for it.

The desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings is, as the saying runs, old as the hills — and as immortal.

For all men have but a little while to live and none knows his fate thereafter. So that a man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his body: and yet the body of man is capable of much curious pleasure.

The optimist sees a light at the end of the tunnel, the realist sees a train entering the tunnel, the pessimist sees a train speeding at him, hell for leather, and the machinist sees three idiots sitting on the rail track. "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true."

No person of quality ever remembers social restrictions save when considering how most piquantly to break them.

No lady is ever a gentleman.