Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humilation and misery. Injustice sustained at the exact degree of necessary tension to turn the cogs of the huge machine-for-the-making-of-rich-men, without bursting the boiler.

It's a fine thing to rise above pride, but you must have pride in order to do so.

God! how is it that we fail to recognize that the mask of pleasure, stripped of all hypocrisy, is that of anguish?

No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.

God ordains that beggars should beg for greatness, as for all else, when greatness shines out of them, and they don't know it.

A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.

What does the truth matter? Haven't we mothers all given our sons a taste for lies, lies which from the cradle upwards lull them, reassure them, send them to sleep: lies as soft and warm as a breast!