"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."
"There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him."
"You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know."
"To define is to limit."
"I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them."
"Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else."