The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.

The modern state no longer has anything but rights; it does not recognize duties any more.

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!

No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.

Optimism approves of everything, submits to everything, believes everything; it is the virtue above all of the taxpayer.

...the most dangerous shortsightedness consists in underestimating the mediocre.

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