We mustn't be subjected to anything, not even to good. A so-called good, to which you succumb, loses the ethycal character. It doesn't become bad in itself, but by being dominated it can have some bad consequences. Every shape of intoxication is is unhealthy, it makes no difference if alcohol or morphine or idealism.
We mustn't consider good and evil as two opposites.
The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.
Nothing builds authority up like silence, splendor of the strong and shelter of the weak.
What a blessing it is that there is one art left to us that is not imitative! Don't stop. I want music tonight. It seems to me that you are the young Apollo, and that I am Marsyas listening to you. I have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know nothing of. The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. I am amazed sometimes at my own sincerity.
[...]
My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You will soon be going about like the converted, and the revivalist, warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all.
Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.
People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.
Before dying, though, I want to fight for life. If I'm able to walk alone, I can go where I want to.
I want there to be at every factory and mine exit my poetry fixed on the ground, in the air, on the victory of mistreated man.
Nothing is permanent in this wicked world - not even our troubles.
I try not to think about tomorrow; the future doesn't exist, say the indio of the highlands, we only count on the past to draw experience and knowledge, and on the present which is just the beat of an eyelid, because in that same instant it turns into past.