A historian is often only a journalist facing backwards.
A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.
A white lie is always pardonable. But he who tells the truth without compulsion merits no leniency.
Ideas are transplanted by splitting, thoughts by sprouting.
Blushing, palpitations, a bad conscience – this is what you get if you haven’t sinned.
Psychoanalysis: a rabbit that was swallowed by a boa constrictor just wanted to see what it was like in there.
It so often happened to me that someone who shared my opinion kept the larger share for himself that I am now forewarned and offer people only ideas.
Art is something that is so perfectly clear that no one comprehends it.
Penalties serve to deter those who are not inclined to commit any crimes.
Through my satire I make little people so big that afterwards they are worthy objects of my satire and no one can reproach me any longer.
To write a novel may be pure pleasure. To live a novel presents certain difficulties. As for reading a novel, I do my best to get out of it.
Speech is the mother, not the handmaid, of thought.
My readers think that I write for the day because my writings are based on the day. So I shall have to wait until my writings are obsolete. Then they may acquire timeliness.
There are two kinds of writers, those who are and those who aren’t. With the first, content and form belong together like soul and body; with the second, they match each other like body and clothes.
What do people have against convicts? Is living together in the pen of freedom, where young people engage in mutual psychology, any more beautiful?
Many women would like to dream with men without sleeping with them. Someone should point out to them that this is utterly impossible.
A historian is not always a prophet facing backwards, but a journalist is always someone who afterwards knew everything beforehand.
Children today laugh at fathers who tell them about dragons. It is necessary to make fear a required subject; otherwise children will never learn it.
I can say with pride that I have spent days and nights not reading anything, and that with unflagging energy I use every moment toacquire gradually an encyclopedic lack of education.
Humanity and bestiality: when will the former finally be uttered with the flavor of hate and the latter with the flavor of love? Does a lion tear his fellow lion to pieces?