A true masterpiece does not tell everything.

The danger of lectures is that they create the illusion of teaching for teachers, and the illusion of learning for learners.

Slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or the taste of the superhuman, cripple judgment. On the day when crime puts on the apparel of innocence, through a curious reversal peculiar to our age, it is innocence that is called on to justify itself. The purpose of this essay is to accept and study that strange challenge.

It is better to burn than to disappear.

Again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. ("The Plague")

I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.

My dear friend, we mustn't give them even the slightest excuse to judge us! Otherwise, we end up in pieces.