Women love only those whom they do not know!

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

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

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

There are two men in me--one lives in the full sense of the word, the other reasons and passes judgment on the first. The first will perhaps take leave of you and the world forever in an hour now; and the second . . . the second?

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 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.