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

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.

Women only love those that they don’t know.

When we retire from the conventions of society and draw close to nature, we involuntarily become children: each attribute acquired by experience falls away from the soul, which becomes anew such as it was once and will surely be again.

I was ready to love the whole world, but no one understood me, and I learned to hate.

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

One should never spurn a penitent criminal: in his despair he may become twice as much a criminal as before.