God put self-pity by the side of despair like the cure by the side of the disease.

Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions will have need of beauty.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion; in order to serve others better, one has to hold them at a distance for a time. But where can one find the solitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mind collects itself and courage gauges its strength? There remain big cities.

Great feelings take with them their own universe, splendid or abject. They light up with their passion an exclusive world in which they recognize their climate.

The absurd is sin without God.

There is always a certain hour of the day and of the night when a man’s courage is at its lowest ebb, and it was that hour only that he feared.

Poor and free rather than rich and enslaved. Of course, men want to be both rich and free, and this is what leads them at times to be poor and enslaved.