At the bottom of the modern man there is always a great thirst for self-forgetfulness, self-distraction . . . and therefore he turns away from all those problems and abysses which might recall to him his own nothingness.

Our life is nothing, it is true, but our life is divine. A breath of nature annihilates us, but we surpass nature in penetrating far beyond her vast phantasmagoria to the changeless and the eternal.

Doubt of the reality of love ends by making us doubt everything.

Love is faith and one faith leads to another.

Life is but a daily oscillation between revolt and submission.

It is dangerous to abandon one's self to the luxury of grief; it deprives one of courage, and even of the wish for recovery.

The masses are the material of democracy, but its form-that is to say, the laws which express the general reason, justice, and utility-can only be rightly shaped by wisdom, which is by no means a universal property.