“What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?”

Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it.

Most people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.

One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one’s soul.

I´m not going to bring a child into the world, and love her, and bring her up, just so that some man may want to sleep with her so much that he’s willing to provide her with board and lodging for the rest of her life.

The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.

Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.

There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one’s means of livelihood.

There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity.

How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.

People talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force; and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity.

Death doesn’t affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn’t concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.

If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.

He is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water.

Oh, it is dreadfully bitter to look at a woman whom you have loved with all your heart and soul, so that you felt you could not bear to let her out of your sight, and realize that you would not mind if you never saw her again. The tragedy of love is indifference.

Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.

Dullness is the first requisite of a good husband.