“I am a man for whom the outside world exists.”

“I had never been into society; for me the world was the enclosure of the college and the seminary. I had a vague knowledge that there was a something called woman, but I never dwelt upon the subject; I was absolutely innocent. I saw my infirm old mother only twice a year; that was the extent of my connection with the outside world.”

“Tear up that funeral shroud—you are going to smother yourself in it. I am beauty, I am youth, I am life—come to me, and together we will be Love itself....Our life together will flow by like a dream, and it will be as one perpetual kiss.”

“If thou wilt be mine, I shall make thee happier than God Himself in His paradise. The angels themselves will be jealous of thee. Tear off that funeral shroud in which thou about to wrap thyself. I am Beauty, I am Youth, I am Life. Come to me! Together we shall be Love.”

“This apparent hurly-burly and disorder turn out, after all, to reproduce real life with its fantastic ways more accurately than the most carefully studied out drama of manners. Every man is in himself all humanity, and if he writes what occurs to him he succeeds better than if he copies, with the help of a magnifying glass, objects placed outside of him.”

“And then again, I am no longer quite such a good-looking young fellow that tapestries leap off the wall in my honour.”

“You know, the immortality of the soul, free will and all that -- it's all very amusing to talk about up to the age of twenty-two, but not after that. Then one ought to be giving one's mind to having fun without catching the pox, arranging one's life as comfortably as possible, having a few decent drawings on the wall, and above all writing well. That's the important thing: well-made sentences...and then a few metaphors. Yes, a few metaphors. They embellish a man's existence.”