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.

I have a congenital desire to contradict; my whole life is merely a chain of sad and unsuccessful contradictions to heart and mind. When faced with enthusiasm, I am seized by a midwinter freeze, and I suppose that frequent dealings with sluggish phlegmatics would have made a passionate dreamer.

my love had grown one with my soul; it became darker, but did not go out

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

Women only love those that they don’t know.

No good ever becomes of a man who forgets an old friend

Happiness comes the way the wind blows.