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.

Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born.

The Christian idea of a perfect heaven that is something other than a non-existence is a contradiction in terms.

Now, a corpse, poor thing, is an untouchable and the process of decay is, of all pieces of bad manners, the vulgarest imaginable. For a corpse is, by definition, a person absolutely devoid of savoir vivre.

In the world of ideas everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled.

Dictators can always consolidate their tyranny by an appeal to patriotism.

Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything, will really do.