Its laugh is the mouth of a volcano which spatters the whole earth.

There is nothing like the hand of the populace for building everything that is built by demolishing.

Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine. Love has made you weak, and weakness is my road. I enter by the heart, and from there I make a home.

If everybody minded their own business,” the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, “the world would go round a deal faster than it does.

The salon was filled with the works of modern artists… all that modern art can give in exchange and as recompense for the art lost and gone with ages long since past.

Those born to wealth, and who have the means of gratifying every wish, know not what is to suffer.

You think me rich because I have gold; I am rich because I have time.

Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.

I divined then, Sonia, that power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up… There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! … I— I wanted to have the daring… and I killed her. I only wanted to have the daring, Sonia! That was the whole cause of it!

Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.

The tyrant grinds down his slaves, and they don’t turn against him; they crush those beneath them.

Rough as a saw-edge, and hard as whinstone! The less you meddle with him the better.