The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

I have always been more afraid of a pen, a bottle of ink and a sheet of paper than of a sword or a pistol.

A curse on those who fear wine: it's because they have evil thoughts and they are afraid that wine will loosen their tongues.

Oh, what is man! The most egoistical of all animals, the most personal of all creatures, who cannot believe otherwise than that the earth revolves, the sun shines and death reaps for him alone - an ant, cursing God from the summit of a blade of grass!