For what did the creator prepare me,Why did he so terribly contradictThe hopes of my youth?

We almost always forgive those we understand.

My whole life has been merely a succession of miserable and unsuccessful denials of feelings or reason.

Evil spawns evil. The first experience of torture gives an understanding of the pleasure in tormenting others.

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.

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

What of it? If I die, I die. It will be no great loss to the world, and I am thoroughly bored with life. I am like a man yawning at a ball; the only reason he does not go home to bed is that his carriage has not arrived yet.