Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.

No truth is proved, no truth achieved, by argument, and the ready-made truths men offer you are mere conveniences or drugs to make you sleep.

Cries of despair, misery, sobbing grief are a kind of wealth.

And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure . . . And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, 'Yes, the stars always make me laugh!' And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you.

I will appoint captains to rule my cities, for it is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.

Sometimes, there is no harm in putting off a piece of work until another day.

If France is to be judged, judge her not by the effects of her defeat but by her readiness to sacrifice herself.