The supreme vice is shallowness.

The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.

The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.

Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women. It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it.

The worst slave owners were those who were kind to their slaves

Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.

The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.