The body always ends by being a bore. Nothing remains beautiful and interesting except thought, because the thought is the life.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood: a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.

In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.

It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

What man really wishes to do he will find a means of doing.

All great art and literature is propaganda.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, they make them.

I never thought much of the courage of a lion-tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.