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 love only those whom they do not know!

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

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.

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

We survive on novelty, so much less demanding than commitment.

Happiness comes the way the wind blows.