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.
Family life is an encroachment on private life.
Most people are sick. But only a few know that this is something they can be proud of. These are the psychoanalysts.
One of the most widespread diseases is diagnosis.
Most critics write critiques which are by the authors they write critiques about. That would not be so bad, but then most authorswrite works which are by the critics who write critiques about them.
This is something that I cannot get over – that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character.
My request that my writing be read twice has aroused great indignation. Unjustly so. After all, I do not ask that they be read once.
A good writer does not receive anywhere near the number of poison-pen letters that is commonly assumed. Among a hundred jackassesthere are not ten who will admit to being jackasses, and at most one who will put it in writing.
In a hollow head there is much room for knowledge.
A philistine is habitually bored and looks for things that won’t bore him. An artist finds things boring, but is never bored.
If by day art is in the service of business, the evenings are devoted to the businessman’s enjoyment of it. That is asking a lot of art, but art and the businessman make it work.
It is not true that one cannot live without a woman. It is simply that one cannot have lived without one.
The extraordinary ability of a woman to forget is not the same as the talent of a lady not to be able to remember.
The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.
Politics is what a man does in order to conceal what he is and what he himself does not know.
Soldiers who don’t know what they’re fighting for know, nevertheless, what they’re not fighting for.
I have often been asked to be fair and view a matter from all sides. I did so, hoping something might improve if I viewed all sides of it. But the result was the same. So I went back to viewing things only from one side, which saves me a lot of work and disappointment. For it is comforting to regard something as bad and be able use one’s prejudice as an excuse.
A “seducer” who boasts of initiating women into the mystery of love is like a stranger who arrives at a railroad station and offers to show the sights to a tourist guide.
When the sun of culture is low, even dwarves will cast long shadows.
Progress makes purses out of human skin.
Der Aphorismus deckt sich nie mit der Wahrheit; er ist entweder eine halbe Wahrheit oder anderthalb.