Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.

It is the root of all religion that a man knows that he is nothing in order to thank God that he is something.

Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.

To desire money is much nobler than to desire success. Desiring money may mean desiring to return to your country, or marry the woman you love, or ransom your father from brigands. But desiring success must mean that you take an abstract pleasure in the unbrotherly act of distancing and disgracing other men.

Art is the signature of man.

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

The telescope makes the world smaller; it is only the microscope that makes it larger.