“Your career will be a painful one. I divine something in you which offends the vulgar.”

“Politics in a literary work, is like a gun shot in the middle of a concert, something vulgar, and however, something which is impossible to ignore.”

“...one of the traits of genius is not to drag its thought through the rut worn by vulgar minds.”

“A melancholy air can never be the right thing; what you want is a bored air. If you are melancholy, it must be because you want something, there is something in which you have not succeeded.It is shewing your inferiority. If you are bored, on the other hand, it is the person who has tried in vain to please you who is inferior.”

“Ah, Sir, a novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies, at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.”

“Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life.”

“If you think of paying court to those in power, your eternal ruin is assured.”