Better to know a few things which are good and necessary than many things which are useless and mediocre

When you understand that you will die to-morrow, if not to-day, and nothing will be left, then everything is so unimportant!... So one goes on living, amusing oneself with hunting, with work - anything so as not think of death

To regard Christ as God, and to pray to him, are to my mind the greatest possible sacrilege.

The magnanimity and sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she is so kindhearted that she can't look at blood, but enjoys eating the calf served up with sauce.

We live in this world like a child who enters a room where a clever person is speaking. The child did not hear the beginning of the speech, and he leaves before the end; and there are certain things which he hears but does not understand

That only shows you have no heart,’ she said. But her eyes said that she knew he had a heart, and that was why she was afraid of him

If a man does not work at necessary and good things, then he will work at unnecessary and stupid things