It is not I who am strong, it is reason, it is truth.

Has science ever retreated? No! It is Catholicism which has always retreated before her, and will always be forced to retreat.

The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.

The word realist means nothing to me, because I would subordinate reality to temperament. Give me what is true and I applaud; but give me what is individual and alive and I applaud even more.

How evil life must be if it were indeed necessary that such imploring cries, such cries of physical and moral wretchedness, should ever and ever ascend to heaven!

These young people naturally grow up with ideas different from ours, for they are born for times when we shall no longer be here

What will be the death of me are buillabaisses, food spiced with pimiento, shellfish, and a load of exquisite rubbish which I eat in disproportionate quantities.