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.

If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.

To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die.

Public opinion exists only where there are no ideas.

M. Zola is determined to show that, if he has not got genius, he can at least be dull.

It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.

It is awfully hard work doing nothing.