No exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice.

There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory.

We live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom: our body.

A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.

If only for the sake of elegance, I try to remain morally pure.

Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.

Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the task of art to undo this work of theirs, making us travel back in the direction from which we have come to the depths where what has really existed lies unknown within us.