A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.

I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the center of the world.

Comedy appeals to the collective mind of the audience and this grows fatigued; while farce appeals to a more robust organ, their collective belly.

The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.

Have common sense and stick to the point.

For men, as a rule, love is but an episode which takes place among the other affairs of the day, and the emphasis laid on it in novels gives it an importance which is untrue to life. There are few men to whom it is the most important thing in the world, and they are not the very interesting ones; even women, with whom the subject is of paramount interest, have a contempt for them.

I [Death] was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.