“Oh, Creator! Can monsters exist in the sight of him who alone knows how they were invented, how they invented themselves, and how they might not have invented themselves?”

“If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist.”

“Nations, like families, have great men only in spite of themselves.”

“How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.”

“I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.”

“You are sitting and smoking; you believe that you are sitting in your pipe, and that your pipe is smoking you; you are exhaling yourself in bluish clouds. You feel just fine in this position, and only one thing gives you worry or concern: how will you ever be able to get out of your pipe?”

“Good sense tells us that earthly things are rare and fleeting, and that true reality exists only in dreams. To draw sustenance from happiness- natural or artificial - you must first have the courage to swallow it; and those who perhaps most merit happiness are precisely those on whom felicity, as mortals conceive it, always acts as a vomitive. ”