Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.
On the stage one must not confuse the nature of a personality with the naturalness of a person.
So-called psychoanalysis is the occupation of lustful rationalists who trace everything in the world to sexual causes – with the exception of their occupation.
I saw a poet chase a butterfly in a meadow. He put his net on a bench where a boy sat reading a book. It’s a misfortune that it is usually the other way round.
Satires which the censor can understand are justly forbidden.
How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.
Progress, under whose feet the grass mourns and the forest turns into paper from which newspaper plants grow, has subordinated the purpose of life to the means of subsistence and turned us into the nuts and bolts for our tools.
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.