God is not necessary to create culpability, or to punish. Our fellow men are enough for that, helped by ourselves.

Without freedom there is no art.

One dies if necessary, one breaks rather than bending. But I bend, because I continue to love myself.

I was born poor and without religion, under a happy sky, feeling harmony, not hostility, in nature. I began not by feeling torn, but in plenitude.

There is no more futile punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

There is no longer a single idea explaining everything, but an infinite number of essences giving a meaning to an infinite number of objects. The world comes to a stop, but also lights up.

Believe me, the hardest thing for a man to give up is that which he really doesn't want, after all.