Quotes

"Let's not look at the big people from up close."

"The best state is the one in which the citizen has the greatest independence and security. What does the soldier think about personal independence? And about personal and property security, the one whose bed is auctioned off in tax arrears?"

"Look at those who say: I do not believe in life on earth; - they are all men who feel their bodies to be self. And look at those who raise their eyes to heaven with confidence, all feel that the body is not the self, but the power that moves the body."

"The man gets angry, gets enraged, if he is surrounded by a woman he doesn't like. A woman doesn't get angry about such things. Sometimes warmly, sometimes coldly, but she accepts every homage. Man's nature is will. The will always clashes. Woman's nature is love. Love always negotiates."

"The man in the capital lives as if his life's purpose is to illustrate this medical issue by example: - What is the quickest way to wear out the human body?"

"Title, rank, membership (election committee, casino, academy, house of magnates, etc.) - and other such things, the clinging, the elbowing, the jostling, - silk tie on a skeleton."

"This is the way to know the weak-minded man: He does not discriminate between those who bow to their honour and those who bow to their purse. The merchant can foist on him what he does not want to buy. He cannot get rid of the woman who torments him. He leaves his child to his will. He never thinks he will die. He takes praise as cash. He walks in tight shoes. He's a waster. He's a man of his word: - I don't mind."

"There is only a dead body. There is no dead soul."

"Be thrifty, but generous with servants. Pay well for all services. He who spurns the man who serves is not a gentleman."

"Laocoon, if depicted alone, would be an excellent symbol of a bad marriage."

"Be as considerate and gentle towards men as if they were women. Be as simple towards women as if they were men."

"If our house catches fire, we take out our pearls, our gold. The rest is just junk anyway. When our body dies, the soul takes its most precious possessions with it to the new body."

"The writer's life is just that: a footprint to be trodden on by those who follow."

"Marriage is certainly a sacrament, but the devil makes the papers for it."

"You can know a man by observing what excites him? The child is excited by this question: nutrition."

"The Olybius's pot in which they say - eternal flame burned... Man is also an earthenware pot."

"It is pointless to write, to say that the writer knows what is in his drama better than the actor. But anyone who talks to our state actors about this will be amazed at their opinions. But an actor should only treat a dead writer's text as a rubber man treats his own skin."

"On the main gate of the 1900 Paris exhibition, Paris was represented by a young woman dressed in a pongee. To me, Paris didn't look like that, but more like an old dame with make-up on her face, smoking cigarettes, drinking absinthe and laughing with false teeth."

"Beware of a man whose eyes are marked by the wrinkles of cunning. He is not a pure soul. Beware of a man who is fattening. He will make you pay for his words. Beware of a man who speaks of your faults as your assets. A mocker. Evil."

"Every soul is a particle of God. It is also evident from the fact that everyone feels himself to be the centre of the universe. And we cannot imagine that we have not always been and will not always be."