A major difficulty in translation is that a word in one language seldom has a precise equivalent in another one.

To use many words to communicate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity. To gather much thought into few words stamps the man of genius.

No one knows what capacities for doing and suffering he has in himself, until something comes to rouse them to activity: just as in a pond of still water, lying there like a mirror, there is no sign of the roar and thunder with which it can leap from the precipice, and yet remain what it is; or again, rise high in the air as a fountain. When water is as cold as ice, you can have no idea of the latent warmth contained in it.

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher.

The cause of laughter is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real project.

I constantly saw the false and the bad, and finally the absurd and the senseless, standing in universal admiration and honour.

The bad thing about all religions is that, instead of being able to confess their allegorical nature, they have to conceal it.