The bed comprehends our whole life, for we were born in it, we live in it, and we shall die in it

I love the night passionately. I love it as I love my country, or my mistress, with an instinctive, deep, and unshakeable love. I love it with all my senses: I love to see it, I love to breathe it in, I love to open my ears to its silence, I love my whole body to be caressed by its blackness. Skylarks sing in the sunshine, the blue sky, the warm air, in the fresh morning light. The owl flies by night, a dark shadow passing through the darkness; he hoots his sinister, quivering hoot, as though he delights in the intoxicating black immensity of space.

You must render: never report.

We are accustomed to use our eyes only with the memory of what other people before us have thought about the object we are looking at.

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

How weak our mind is; how quickly it is terrified and unbalanced as soon as we are confronted with a small, incomprehensible fact. Instead of dismissing the problem with: "We do not understand because we cannot find the cause," we immediately imagine terrible mysteries and supernatural powers.

The great artists are those who impose their personal vision upon humanity.