The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
What is the seal of liberation? Not to be ashamed in front of oneself.
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
One must pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while still alive.
There is an innocence in admiration: it occurs in one who has not yet realized that they might one day be admired.
A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.
The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.
No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.
The spiritualization of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity.
I am one thing, my writings are another.
The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man.
Plato was a bore.
Love is blind. Friendship closes its eyes.
The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
Love brings to light a lover’s noble and hidden qualities-his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive of his normal qualities.
Without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all.
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.