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

We call beauty that which supplies us with a particular pleasure.

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

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

God forgive me everything!' she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling.

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.

I believe that the reason of life is for each of us simply to grow in love.