If people lacked the capacity to receive the thoughts of the men who preceded them and to pass on to others their own thoughts, men would be like wild beasts. And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art, people would be almost more savage still, and, above all, more separated from and more hostile to one another. Therefore the activity of art is a most important one, as important as the activity of speech itself and as generally diffused.

I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine.

Only greatly insolent people establish a religious law which is to be taken for granted by others, which should be accepted by everyone on faith, without any discussion or doubts. Why must people do this?

It is easier to produce ten volumes of philosophical writings than to put one principle into practice.

The life of our class, of the wealthy and the learned, was not only repulsive to me but had lost all meaning. The sum of our action and thinking, of our science and art, all of it struck me as the overindulgences of a spoiled child.

The teaching of the church, theoretically astute, is a lie in practice and a compound of vulgar superstitions and sorcery.

Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.