They came from the four corners of the earth, driven by hunger, plague, tumors, and the cold, and stopped here. They couldn’t go any futrther because of the ocean. That’s France, that’s the French people.

That is perhaps what we seek throughout life, that and nothing more, the greatest possible sorrow so as to become fully ourselves before dying.

It is of men, and of them only, that one should always be frightened.

Women always have some mental reservation.

A man should be resigned to knowing himself a little better each day if he hasn't got the guts to put an end to his sniveling once and for all.

With two thousand years of Christianity behind him... a man can't see a regiment of soldiers march past without going off the deep end. It starts off far too many ideas in his head.

There is no rest for the humble except in despising the great, whose only thought of the people is inspired by self-interest or sadism.