Each new generation is reared by its predecessor; the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.

It is too great comfort which turns a man against himself. Life is most readily renounced at the time and among the classes where it is least harsh.

Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.

It is only by historical analysis that we can discover what makes up man, since it is only in the course of history that he is formed.

At first sight, one does not see what relations there can be between religion and logic.

The wise man, knowing how to enjoy achieved results without having constantly to replace them with others, finds in them an attachment to life in the hour of difficulty.

Sociological method as we practice it rests wholly on the basic principle that social facts must be studied as things, that is, as realities external to the individual. There is no principle for which we have received more criticism; but none is more fundamental. Indubitably for sociology to be possible, it must above all have an object all its own. It must take cognizance of a reality which is not in the domain of other sciences... there can be no sociology unless societies exist, and that societies cannot exist if there are only individuals.