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.
That is one of the great secrets of life 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.
It is perfectly monstrous,' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Women treat us [men] like humanity treats gods – they worship us and keep bothering us to do something.
And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.
There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as...
You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of color in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across ...
What fire does not destroy, it hardens
There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever...
You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets...
You cut life to pieces with your epigrams.
Even things that are true can be proved.
The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird was in her voice.
I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life.
You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.
