I am a great foe of favoritism in public life, in private life, and even in the delicate relationship of an author to his works.

Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy!

You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

We can never cease to be ourselves.

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

All one's work might have been better done; but this is a sort of reflection a worker must put aside courageously if he doesn't mean every one of his conceptions to remain forever a private vision, an evanescent reverie.

I do not know whether I have been a good seaman, but I know I have been a very faithful one.