There is no idea that does not carry in itself a possible refutation, no word that does not imply its opposite.

I drank a second mouthful in which I find nothing more than in the first, then a third which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing its magic.

A man of letters, merely by reading a phrase, can estimate exactly the literary merit of its author.

In reality, in love there is a permanent suffering which joy neutralizes, renders virtual delays, but which can at any moment become what it would have become long earlier if one had not obtained what one wanted -- atrocious.

A work should convey its entire meaning by itself, imposing it on the spectator even before he knows what the subject is.

People don't know when they are happy. They're never so unhappy as they think they are.

The sensitiveness claimed by neurotic is matched by their egotism: they cannot abide the flaunting by others of the sufferings to which they pay an even increasing amount of attention in themselves.