“This is something that I cannot get over, that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character
“Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis
“When a man is treated like a beast, he says, 'After all, I'm human.' When he behaves like a beast, he says 'After all, I'm only human.'
“It is not the truth that a man possesses, or believes that he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forward to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man.
“Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum
“We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.
“An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable; A villain, like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards