"A "seducer" who boasts of initiating women into the mystery of love is like a stranger who arrives at a railroad station and offers to show the sights to a tourist guide."

"There is no more unfortunate creature under the sun than a fetishist who yearns for a woman's shoe and has to settle for the whole woman."

"To divide people into sadists and masochists is almost as foolish as dividing them into eaters and digesters. In all cases one must disregard abnormalities; after all, there are people who are better at digesting than they are at eating and vice versa. As regards masochism and sadism, it is safe to say that a healthy person displays both perversities. The only ugly thing in each case is the word. The one derived from the novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch is particularly degrading, and it is hard not to let one's taste for things be spoiled by the designation. Nevertheless, a man with an artistic imagination will manage to let an authentic woman turn him into a masochist and an inauthentic one into a sadist. One knocks the latter's educated unnaturalness out of her until the woman is revealed. If she already is a woman, the only thing left to do is adore her."

"True jealously wants not only fidelity, but the proof of fidelity as an imaginable situation. A jealous man is not content with his beloved not being unfaithful. Precisely that which he is not doing does not leave him in peace. But since there is no proving what is not done and the jealous man insists on proof, he ends up settling on proof of unfaithfulness."

"A man's jealousy is a social institution, a woman's prostitution an instinct."

"Nothing is more unfathomable than a woman's superficiality."

"Many women would like to dream with men without sleeping with them. Someone should point out to them that this is utterly impossible."

"The extraordinary ability of a woman to forget is not the same as the talent of a lady not to be able to remember."

"A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful."

"How unreliable is the woman caught being faithful! Today she is faithful to you, tomorrow to another."

"A woman is, occasionally, quite a serviceable substitute for masturbation. It takes an abundance of imagination, to be sure."

"Women at least have elegant dresses. But what can men use to cover their emptiness?"

"The superman is a premature ideal, one that presupposes a man."

"When someone has behaved like an animal, he says: "I'm only human!" But when he is treated like an animal, he says: "I'm human, too!""

"A cigar," said the altruist, "a cigar, my good man, I cannot give you. But any time you need a light, just come round, mine is always lit."

"The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people meaner."

"The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable."

"There is no doubt that a dog is loyal. But does that mean we should emulate him? After all, he is loyal to people, not to other dogs."

"Solitude would be an ideal state if one were able to pick the people one avoids."