“Every woman is a rebel.”

The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.

If you are not long, I will wait for you all my life.

With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

To define is to limit.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.

A populace never rebels from passion for attack, but from impatience of suffering.

There is nothing in this world that makes me want to be a rebel more than being told to be obedient.

I don’t push buttons to push buttons. Throwing the rebel card out there is really cheap.

I really rebel against authority.

I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It’s still my symbol of rebellion — against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others’ ideas.

When all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect.

Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.

One of the most rebellious things a woman can do is allow people to think she’s mean.