People nowadays have such high hopes of America and the political conditions obtaining there that one might say the desires, at least the secret desires, of all enlightened Europeans are deflected to the west, like our magnetic needles.

You believe that I run after the strange because I do not know the beautiful; no, it is because you do not know the beautiful that I seek the strange.

When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so.

It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial.

Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.

Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.

What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?

The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.

Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.

Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.