Life is very short, and it ought not to be spent crawling at the feet of miserable scoundrels.

...one of the traits of genius is not to drag its thought through the rut worn by vulgar minds.

An English traveller relates how he lived upon intimate terms with a tiger; he had reared it and used to play with it, but always kept a loaded pistol on the table.

Politics in a literary work, is like a gun shot in the middle of a concert, something vulgar, and however, something which is impossible to ignore.

The man of genius is he and he alone who finds such joy in his art that he will work at it come hell or high water.

Friendship has its illusions no less than love.

It is better to have a prosaic husband and to take a romantic lover.