The Immoralist

"You have to let other people be right. It consoles them for not being anything else."

"I soon realized that what are supposedly the worst things (lying, to mention only one) are hard to do only when you have never done them; but that each of them becomes, and so quickly! easy, pleasant, sweet in repetition, and soon a second nature."

"What interest could I take in myself, except as a perfectible being? This unknown perfection, vaguely as I imagined it, exalted my will as never before in my longing to achieve it; I dedicated this will utterly to fortifying my body."

"… actions whose motives he cannot understand—that is, actions not prompted by the hope of profit."

"The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they’re seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?"

"Today beauty no longer acts, and action no longer bothers about being beautiful."