“You can be sincere and still be stupid.”

Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.

I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.

When reason fails, the devil helps!

People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

I think the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

Besides, nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.

A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.

I love mankind, he said, “but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.

Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.

You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.

Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.

Human will does not by liberty obtain grace, but by grace obtains liberty.

The only things in my life that compatibly exists with this grand universe are the creative works of the human spirit.

Human beings lose their logic in their vindictiveness.

It is the inalienable right of all to be happy.

Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of past grief becomes a source of present pleasure – such is the strange alchemy of the spirit.

In every human Beast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance.

Whatever a person may be like, we must still love them because we love God.

But the devil is a subtle worm; he does not give up at one defeat, for he knows human nature, and the strength of the forces which battle for him.