We find it hard to picture to ourselves the state of mind of a man of older days who firmly believed that the Earth was the centre of the Universe, and that all the heavenly bodies revolved around it. He could feel beneath his feet the writhings of the damned amid the flames; very likely he had seen with his own eyes and smelt with his own nostrils the sulphurous fumes of Hell escaping from some fissure in the rocks. Looking upwards, he beheld ... the incorruptible firmament, wherein the stars hung like so many lamps.

Christianity has done a great deal for love by making a sin of it.

We live between two dense clouds; the forgetting of what was and the uncertainty of what will be.

There are no bad books any more than there are ugly women.

I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

The law ... allows rich as well as poor to sleep under bridges.