It's probably a merciful thing that pain is impossible to describe from memory

I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us.

There are things about quitting the smoking habit for which nobody prepares you. Did I have any idea that I would indulge in long, drooling-nay, dribbling-lascivious dreams in which I was still wreathed in fragrant blue fumes? I would wake with the complete and guilty conviction that I had sinned in word and deed while I was asleep.

If god really wanted people to be free of [wicked thoughts], he should have taken more care to invent a different species.

The brilliant Schiller was wrong in his Joan of Arc when he said against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. It is actually by means of the gods that we make our stupidity and gullibility into something ineffable.

I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.

I am a person of faith: I am a person who will believe practically anything on no evidence at all.