History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten. ...What is interesting is brought forward as if it had been central and efficacious in the march of events, and harmonies are turned into causes. Kings and generals are endowed with motives appropriate to what the historian values in their actions; plans are imputed to them prophetic of their actual achievements, while the thoughts that really preoccupied them remain buried in absolute oblivion.

It is a great bond to dislike the same things.

It is wisdom to believe the heart.

Religion is the love of life in the consciousness of impotence.

Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.

The living have never shown me how to live.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.