No single man makes history. History cannot be seen, just as one cannot see grass growing. Wars and revolutions, kings and Robespierres, are history's organic agents, its yeast. But revolutions are made by fanatical men of action with one-track mind, geniuses in their ability to confine themselves to a limited field. They overturn the old order in a few hours or days, the whole upheaval takes a few weeks or at most years, but the fanatical spirit that inspired the upheavals is worshiped for decades thereafter, for centuries.

If it's so painful to love and absorb electricity, how much more painful it is to be a woman, to be the electricity, to inspire love.

I hate everything you say, but not enough to kill you for it.

Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people's songs.

That's metaphysics, my dear fellow. It's forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won't take it.

I love you wildly, insanely, infinitely.

Oh, how one wishes sometimes to escape from the meaningless dullness of human eloquence, from all those sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long, grinding labor, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion!