Why is youth so short and age so long?

Love, the one supreme, unceasing source of human felicity, the one sole joy which lifts the whole mortal existence into the empyrean, was by it [Christianity] degraded into the mere mechanical action of reproduction.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

Power is sweet, and when you are a little clerk you love its sweetness quite as much as if you were an emperor, and maybe you love it a good deal more.

Music is not a science any more than poetry is. It is a sublime instinct, like genius of all kinds.

We do not want to think. We do not want to hear. We do not care about anything. Only give us a good dinner and plenty of money, and let us outshine our neighbors. There is the Nineteenth Century Gospel.

Scandals are like dandelion seeds--they are arrow-headed, and stick where they fall, and bring forth and multiply fourfold.