The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.

It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility

To be boosted by an illusion is not to live better than to live in harmony with the truth ... these refusals to part with a decayed illusion are really an infection to the mind.

Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.

Man is a fighting animal; his thoughts are his banners, and it is a failure of nerve in him if they are only thoughts.