Motivational Quotes

"I have cultivated my hysteria with delight and terror."

"One must work, if not from inclination, at least from despair, since, as I have fully proved, to work is less wearisome than to amuse oneself."

"Remember! The abyss is always thirsty; the water-clock runs dry."

"He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window."

"The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist."

"Work is less boring than amusement."

"Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty."

"Hatred is a precious liquor, a poison dearer than that of the Borgias—because it is made of our blood, our health, our sleep, and two-thirds of our love!"

"The more one works, the better one works, and the more one wants to work."

"The true hero amuses himself alone."

"For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation."

"Any man, who can be bored in the heart of a multitude, is a blockhead! A blockhead! And I despise him!"

"Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art."

"It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree."

"To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery."

"There is no sweet without some sour."

"The man who is unable to people his solitude is equally unable to be alone in a bustling crowd."

"Life has but one true charm: the charm of the Game."

"There are in every man, at every hour, two simultaneous postulations, one towards God, the other towards Satan."

"One should always be drunk. That's all that matters... But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk."

"It is time to get drunk! To be not the martyred slaves of Time, be drunk; be drunk unceasingly!"

"Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will."

"Every healthy man can do without food for two days—but not without poetry."

"Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is in dreams."

"Nothing can be done except little by little."

"The dandy must aspire to be sublime without interruption; he must live and sleep before a mirror."

"Inspiration comes of working every day."

"Everything that is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation."

"I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old."

"A series of small wills makes a huge result."

"Imagination is the queen of truth, and possibility is one of the regions of truth."

"To be a great man and a saint for oneself, that is the only important thing."