Our true birthplace is that in which we cast for the first time an intelligent eye on ourselves. My first homelands were my books.

Since man, fragment of the universe, is governed by the same laws that preside over the heavens, it is by no means absurd to search there above for the themes of our lives, for those frigid sympathies that participate in our achievements as well as our blunderings.

I think still that someone wiser than I might well have remained happy till his death.

I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily

Passion such as hers is all consent, asking little in return. I had merely to enter a room where she was to see her face take on that peaceful expression of one who is resting in bed. If I touched her, I had the impression that all the blood in her veins was turning to honey.

For my part I have sought liberty more than power, and power only because it can lead to freedom. What interested me was not a philosophy of the free man (all who try that have proved tiresome), but a technique: I hoped to discover the hinge where our will meets and moves with destiny, and where discipline strengthens, instead of restraining, our nature.

Men who care passionately for women attach themselves at least as much to the temple and to the accessories of the cult as to their goddess herself.