Francis Picabia: Aphorisms

Nature is unfair? So much the better, inequality is the only bearable thing,the monotony of equality can only lead us to boredom. * Let us never forget that the greatest man is never more than an animal disguised as a god. * Those who draw their ideal from the ideal tend to have regrets later: ideals all belong to an era other than honesty. * Our thoughts are the shadows of our actions. * Reason is a light which makes me see things as they are not. * The problem of conscience only presents itself to us when we begin tounderstand the extent to which we can do without it. * All men are in effect a single man because multiplicity is only an illusion. * The most convincing eloquence is silence. * Beauty is relative to the amount of interest it arouses. * Paralysis is the first stage of wisdom. * Men have more imagination for killing than for saving. * The unknown is the exception, the know a deception. * Sleep, death; frontiers. Great beauty always hesitates between life and death.