Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

A nation is not going mad when it does extravagant things, so long as it does them in an extravagant spirit. But whenever we see things done wildly, but taken tamely, then the State is growing insane.

You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it.

The world will very soon be divided, unless I am mistaken, into those who still go on explaining our success, and those somewhat more intelligent who are trying to explain our failure.

I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since.

Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church.

Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.