"There are writers who don't recognize themselves, as if they don't have their noses in the middle of their faces. (April 23, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 57)"

"Irony is the modesty of humanity. (April 30, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 57)"

"The fear of boredom is the only excuse for work. (September 10, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 60)"

"When you're in a crowd, you feel like everyone is looking through your ears. (October 4, 1892; Vergani, p. 60)"

"My fear was that one day I would be nothing more than a harmless Flaubert from the drawing room. (May 7, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 46)"

"Sir, I have seen on the butcher's bench several brains similar to yours. (October 16, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 48)"

"You have to take the idea that comes to you by the neck and immediately crush it on the paper. (May 7, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 46)"

"I have calculated that the literature may be enough to feed a sparrow. (November 25, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 50)"

"It is necessary for man free to take the liberty of being slave from time to time. (January 27, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 53)"

"What will save us? The faith? I don't want to have faith, and I don't want to be saved. (January 30, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 54)"

"The new formula of the novel is not to make the novel. (April 6, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 56)"

"Oscar Wilde has breakfast next to me. He has the originality of being English, he gives you a cigarette, but he chooses it himself. It doesn't go around the board, but it moves an entire board. His face is covered with small red marks. He is huge and carries a huge cane stick. (April 7, C.E.1892; Vergani, p. 56)"

"We are all poor imbeciles (I speak for myself, of course) incapable of being good or bad for two full hours straight. (January 30; Vergani, p. 54)"

"Style is the oblivion of all styles. (April 7, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 46)"

"The crit is a soldier who fires on his troops. Quoted in"

"Never be satisfied: art is all here."

""I don't get involved in politics" is like saying "I don't deal with life". , ilsole24ore.com."

"When I think of all the books I have left to read, I am sure that I am still happy."

"If you want to win the sympathy of women tell them the things you wouldn't want men to say to your wife."

"Baudelaire: his heavy phrase, loaded with electric fluids. (C.E.1887; Vergani, p. 11)"

"If even the slightest truth could come out of a discussion, there would be less discussion. Nothing is more depressing than understanding each other: once you have understood each other, there is nothing more to say to each other. (October 24, C.E.1887; Vergani, p. 12)"

"The most beautiful pages about the campaign are written in the middle of the city. (November 25, C.E.1887; Vergani, p. 13)"

"Work thinks, laziness dreams. It has its own very bad way of being good. (December 27, C.E.1887; Vergani, p. 13)"

"How many people wanted to kill themselves and instead limited themselves to tearing up their photographs! (December 29, C.E.1888; Vergani, p. 15)"

"Depicts the ideal of calm with the image of a cat sitting. (January 30, C.E.1889; Vergani, p. 16)"

"The most stupid exaggeration is that of tears. It's as annoying as a faucet that won't close. (March 29, C.E.1889; p. 17)"

"Horror of the bourgeois is a bourgeois attitude. (April 10, 1889; Vergani, p. 18)"

"Do we have a destiny? How boring not to know! How boring it would be if you knew! (January 14, C.E.1889; Vergani, p. 19)"

"The sleep is the square of memories. Help their return. (August 30, C.E.1889; Vergani, p. 21)"

"I love men more or less, depending on the amount of annotations I can get out of them. (November 25, C.E.1889; Vergani, p. 32)"

"You can be poet and have short hair. You can be a poet and pay your rent regularly. You can be a poet and make love to your wife. (January 2, C.E.1890; p. 33)"

"It is necessary to operate through dissociation and not through the association of ideas. An association is almost always trivial. Dissociation, by breaking down, discovers hidden affinities. (January 24, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 33)"

"The bourgeois, are the others. (January 28, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 33)"

"You enter a book like a train, with a few glances behind you, with some hesitation and with the boredom of changing places and ideas. How will the trip go? What will the book be like? (February 15, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 33)"

"Look for the ridiculous in everything, you will find it. (February 17, C.E.1890)"

"The beggar gaze of the actor who in all circumstances, even in the most serious, turns around to make sure that he is looked at and that he has been recognized. (February 20, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 34)"

"praise is placed as money is placed: to be returned to us with interest. (March 18, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 36)"

"What does it matter what I do? Ask me what I think. (April 12, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 36)"

"The two Dumas' turned the theory of economics upside down. The father was the prodigal, and the son was the miser. (April 17, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 36)"

"You are twenty years old from fifteen to thirty years old. (June 28, C.E.1890)"

"Mérimée is perhaps the writer who will last the longest, because he makes less use of images than all the others, this source of the old age of style. Posterity will belong to the dry writers, to the constipated writers. (August 12, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 37)"

"Cracked plates last longer than intact plates. (September 4, C.E.1890; Vergani, p. 37)"

"No matter how whole our lives are, we can always be classified into some category of thieves. (January 10, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 40)"

"George Sand, the Breton cow of literature. (February 23, C.E.1891; Vergani, p. 41)"

"I don't read anything for fear of finding something good. (March 7, C.E.1891; p. 43)"

"Jean-Baptiste-Louis Crevier, History of the Roman emperors from Augustus to Constantine, volume III, for Francesco Rossi stamp. of the Public, Siena, C.E.1777."

"is known throughout the world as the most renowned example of the prodigious rise and frightful fall of a favorite, who of fortune of him. (volume III, book VI, p. 7)"

"Sejano had everything that was necessary to train those great villains, authors of the overthrow of states and of the most terrible revolutions. A body of the strongest and most robust to tolerate fatigue: an immoderate audacity, combined with a profound dissimulation: the talent of making oneself acceptable and dear, and of discrediting and degrading others: he knew how to make equal use of flattery and arrogance according to need: he showed an external air of modesty, while internally he was devoured by the desire to reign. And to succeed he sometimes employed liberality, and the lure of luxury and debauchery, most often activity and vigilance, qualities commendable in themselves, but which become extremely , when they are not he pretends to have them only to satisfy ambition. (volume III, book VI, pp. 8-9)"

"This famous man, [Gnaeus Domitius Afro] often praised by Quintilian as the greatest orator he had heard, was born in Nimes, a Roman colony, and having moved to Rome to improve his fortune, he was currently walking the path of honors. He had been Praetor a short time before; but since he held only a mediocre rank in the City, he sought opportunities to make a name for himself at whatever cost. He therefore accused Claudia [Pulcra, great-granddaughter of Augustus] of adultery with Furnius, of spells, and of magical operations directed against the Emperor. (volume III, book VI, pp. 29-30)"

"It was more difficult to gain access to Sejano than to the Emperor. The favor of an audience with this insolent Minister was only obtained with very warm requests, and with the willingness to serve him in his ambitious projects. It is stated that the spectacle of the servants, exhibited on this occasion before his eyes, greatly increased his arrogance. (volume III, book VI, pp. 44)"