The English are crooked as a nation and honest as individuals. The contrary is true of the French, who are honest as a nation and crooked as individuals.

Debauchery is perhaps an act of despair in the face of infinity.

Genius is the talent of a person who is dead.

People don't like the true and simple; they like fairy tales and humbug.

If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.

Laughter is the mind's intonation. There are ways of laughing which have the sound of counterfeit coins.

One of the proud joys of the man of letters - if that man of letters is an artist - is to feel within himself the power to immortalize at will anything he chooses to immortalize. Insignificant though he may be, he is conscious of possessing a creative divinity. God creates lives; the man of imagination creates fictional lives which may make a profound and as it were more living impression on the world's memory.