All that makes a lunatic are the very ordinary ideas of mankind shut up inside a man's head.

Even diseases have lost their prestige, there aren't so many of them left. Think it over... no more syphilis, no more clap, no more typhoid... antibiotics have taken half the tragedy out of medicine.

Poor people never, or hardly ever, ask for an explanation of all they have to put up with. They hate one another, and content themselves with that.

Life is filigree work. What is written clearly is not worth much, it's the transparency that counts.

Most people die at the last minute; others twenty years beforehand, some even earlier. They are the wretched of the earth.

History doesn't pass the dishes again.

All that makes a lunatic are the very ordinary ideas of mankind shut up inside a man's head.