Really, when I think it over, literature has only one excuse for existing; it saves the person who makes it from the disgustingness of life.

At a period when Literature was wont to attribute the grief of living exclusively to the mischances of disappointed love or the jealousy of adulterous deceptions, he had said not a word of these childish maladies, but had sounded those more incurable, more poignant and more profound: wounds that are inflicted by satiety, disillusion and contempt in ruined souls tortured by the present, disgusted with the past, terrified and desperate of the future.

How inferior the human machine is, compared to man-made machines. They can be decoked, unscrewed, oiled and parts replaced. Decidedly, nature is not a very wonderful thing.

The only really indecent people are the chaste.

Really, when I think it over, literature has only one excuse for existing; it saves the person who makes it from the disgustingness of life.

He realized at last that the arguments of pessimism were powerless to comfort him

The loveliest tune imaginable becomes vulgar and insupportable as soon as the public begins to hum it and the hurdy-gurdies make it their own.