“Suppose, gentleman, that man is not stupid.”

“Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.”

“A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.”

“How does it come about that what an intelligent man expresses is much stupider than what remains inside him?”

“Now I'm living out my life in a corner, trying to console myself with the stupid, useless excuse that an intelligent man cannot turn himself into anything, that only a fool can make anything he wants out of himself.”

“for the idea was by no means so stupid as it seems nowthat it has failed.... (Everything seems stupid when it fails.)”

“You can be sincere and still be stupid.”