There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.

Solitude is indeed dangerous for a working intelligence. We need to have around us people who think and speak. When we are alone for a long time we people the void with phantoms

It is better to be unhappy in love than unhappy in marriage, but some people manage to be both.

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.

Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness.