I love enemies, though not in the Christian way. They amuse me, excite my blood. Being always on one’s guard, catching every glance, the significance of every word, guessing at intentions, frustrating their plots, pretending to be tricked, and suddenly, with a shove, upturning the whole enormous and arduously built edifice of their cunning and schemes—that’s what I call life.

Love, like fire, goes out without fuel.

In simple hearts the feeling for the beauty and grandeur of nature is a hundred-fold stronger and more vivid than in us, ecstatic composers of narratives in words and on paper.

In people's eyes I readPages of malice and sin.

It is sad to see a young man's fondest hopes and dreams shattered when the rose-colured veil is plucked away and he sees the actions and feelings of men for what they are. But he still has the hope of replacing his old illusions with others, just as fleeting, but also just as sweet.

Afraid of decision, I buried my finer feelings in the depths of my heart and they died there.

I was born, so that the whole world could be a spectatorOf my triumph or my doom.