Do you believe you can know yourselves if you don't somehow con- struct yourselves? Or that I can know you if I don't construct you in my way? And can you know me if I don't construct you in my way? We can know only what we succeed in giving form to.

Pretending is a virtue. If you cant pretend, you can't be king.

Woman - for example, look at her case! She turns tantalizing inviting glances on you. You seize her. No sooner does she feel herself in your grasp than she closes her eyes. It is a sign of her mission, the sign by which she says to man: "Blind yourself, for I am blind."

When you say you are in love with humanity, you are well satisfied with yourself.

Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.

One cannot choose what he writes - one can only choose to face it.

Each of us when he appears before his fellows is clothed in a certain dignity. But every man knows what unconfessable things pass within the secrecy of his own heart.