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

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

I was lying, but I wanted to rouse him. I have an inborn urge to contradict; my whole life has been a mere chain of sad and futile opposition to the dictates of either heart or reason. The presence of an enthusiast makes me as cold as a midwinter's day, and, I believe, frequent association with a listless phlegmatic would make me an impassioned dreamer.

Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.

Happy people are ignoramuses and glory is nothing else but success, and to achieve it one only has to be cunning.

O vanity! you are the lever by means of which Archimedes wished to lift the earth!