We are ordinarily so indifferent to people that when we have invested one of them with the possibility of giving us joy, or suffering, it seems as if he must belong to some other universe, he is imbued with poetry.

The highest praise of God consists in the denial of him by the atheist who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator.

Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces.

Those whose suffering is due to love are, as we say of certain invalids, their own physicians.

One reads the papers as one wants to with a bandage over one's eyes without trying to understand the facts, listening to the soothing words of the editor as to the words of one s mistress.

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

It is not only by dint of lying to others, but also of lying to ourselves, that we cease to notice that we are lying.