Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

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

Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.

but the bravest man among us is afraid of himself

Cultivated leisure is the aim of man.

It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the true explanation of the world, whatever may be the explanation of the next.

When a man does exactly what a woman expects him to do she doesn't think much of him. One should always do what a woman doesn't expect, just as one should say what she doesn't understand.