Only good questions deserve good answers.

There are few things easier than to live badly and die well.

Everything that is popular is wrong.

The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of place is history. In novels they are detestable.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm.

Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.

I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!