Quotes

I have my own virtue, which I am constantly cultivating and refining by teaching myself not to tolerate in me or my surroundings anything but the exquisite.

The finest virtues can become deformed with age. The precise mind becomes finicky; the thrifty man, miserly; the cautious man, timorous; the man of imagination, fanciful. Even perseverance ends up in a sort of stupidity. Just as, on the other hand, being too willing to understand too many opinions, too diverse ways of seeing, constancy is lost and the mind goes astray in a restless fickleness.

Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.

The artist who is after success lets himself be influenced by the public. Generally such an artist contributes nothing new, for the public acclaims only what it already knows, what it recognizes.

I do not love men: I love what devours them.

No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond.

The truth is that as soon as we are no longer obliged to earn our living, we no longer know what to do with our life and recklessly squander it.

A straight path never leads anywhere
 except to the objective.

Our deeds attach themselves to us like the flame to phosphorus. They constitute our brilliance, to be sure, but only in so far as they consume us.

Man is extraordinarily clever in preventing himself from being happy; it would seem that the less able he is to endure misfortune the more apt he is to attach himself to it.

When I think over the past, I am like a person whose eyes cannot properly measure distances and is liable to think things extremely remote which on examination prove to be quite near.

There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.

I believe all that is possible is striving to come into being; and all that can will, if man helps.

Let every emotion be capable becoming an intoxication to you. If what you eat fails to make you drunk, it is because you are not hungry enough.

We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves.

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.

Profound optimism is always on the side of the tortured.

Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.

It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.

Art begins with resistance — at the point where resistance is overcome.