Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.

Human beings are mercifully so constituted as to be able to conceal from themselves what they intend to do until they are well into the doing of it.

whatever a work of art may be, the artist certainly cannot dare to be simple. He must have a nature as complicated and as violent, as totally unsuggestive of the word innocence, as a modern war.

All disgrace smells alike. Differences in ruin are only matters of degree.

A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample.

There is, of course, no reason for the existence of the male sex except that one sometimes needs help with moving the piano.

the law, like art, is always vainly racing to catch up with experience.