My tastes are aristocratic, my actions democratic.

One of the hardest tasks is to extract continually from one's soul an almost inexhaustible ill will.

One sees qualities at a distance and defects at close range.

To gaze into the depths of the sea is, in the imagination, like beholding the vast unknown, and from its most terrible point of view. The submarine gulf is analogous to the realm of night and dreams. There also is sleep, unconsciousness, or at least apparent unconsciousness, of creation. There in the awful silence and darkness, the rude first forms of life, phantomlike, demoniacal, pursue their horrible instincts.

Women play with their beauty as children do with their knives. They wound themselves with it.

Our mind is enriched by what we receive, our heart by what we give.

I write with one hand, but I fight with both.