I am not sincere, even when I say I am not.

Style means the right word. The rest matters little.

We are in the world to laugh. In purgatory or in hell we shall no longer be able to do so. And in heaven it would not be proper.

As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to love it more and more.

Life is what our character makes it. We fashion it, as a snail does its shell. A man can say: I never made a fortune because it is not in my character to be rich.

We are ignorant of the Beyond because this ignorance is the condition of our own life. Just as ice cannot know fire except by melting and vanishing.

Let us stay at home: there we are decent. Let us not go out: our defects wait for us at the door, like flies.