After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed and mourning over tragedies that were not my own.

Fashion: by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment the universal.

Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.

A process which makes one rogue cleverer than another.

I don’t write this letter to put bitterness into your heart, but to pluck it out of mine. For my own sake I must forgive you.

A virtuous abstinence from the joys of pederasty comes most easily to those who have no taste for it.

Pleasures may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrows cannot break it. Hearts live by being wounded.