“One should never spurn a penitent criminal: in his despair he may become twice as much a criminal as before.”

For what did the creator prepare me,Why did he so terribly contradict, The hopes of my youth?

And I, as I lived, in an alien land, Will die a slave and an orphan.

Women love only those whom they do not know!

My love had grown one with my soul; it became darker, but did not go out.

An unusual beginning must have an unusual end.

What is this eternity to me without you? What is the infinity of my domains? Empty ringing words, A spacious temple – without a divinity!

Women only love those that they don’t know.

In the first place, [his eyes] never laughed when he laughed. Have you ever noticed this peculiarity some people have? It is either the sign of an evil nature or of a profound and lasting sorrow.

Out of life’s storm I carried only a few ideas – and not one feeling.

My whole life has been merely a succession of miserable and unsuccessful denials of feelings or reason.

Of two friends, one is always the slave of the other, although frequently neither acknowledges the fact to himself.

Happy people are ignoramuses and glory is nothing else but success, and to achieve it one only has to be cunning.

We practically always excuse things when we understand them.

Evil spawns evil. The first experience of torture gives an understanding of the pleasure in tormenting others.

In people’s eyes I read pages of malice and sin.

Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.