The perfect woman perpetrates literature as she perpetrates a small sin: as an experiment, in passing, glancing around to see whether anybody notices--and to make sure that somebody notices.

"Faith" as an imperative is a veto against science-in praxi, it means lies at any price.

So live your life of obedience and of war! What matter about long life! What warrior wisheth to be spared!

If that glad message of your Bible were written in your faces, you would not need to demand belief in the authority of that book in such stiff-necked fashion.

What good is a book that does not even transport us beyond all books?

Socrates condemned art because he preferred philosophy and only after much internal struggle did Plato accept this judgment.

Weariness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity-and finally liberty is bestowed by sleep.