But then every man is ludicrous if you look at him from outside, without taking into account what’s going on in his heart and mind.

The more a man knows about himself in relation to every kind of experience, the greater his chance of suddenly, one fine morning, realizing who in fact he is.

We can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love. Love is a mode of knowledge

The brotherhood of men does not imply their equality. Families have their fools and their men of genius, their black sheep and their saints, their worldly successes and their worldly failures. A man should treat his brothers lovingly and with justice, according to the deserts of each. But the deserts of every brother are not the same.

The consistent thinker, the consistently moral man, is either a walking mummy or else, if he has not succeeded in stifling all his vitality, a fanatical monomaniac.

Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning, truth and beauty can't.

Champagne had the taste of an apple peeled with a steel knife.