Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.

Every hour has its immediate duty, its special injunction which dominates all others.

The founding of libraries was like constructing more public granaries, amassing reserves against a spiritual winter which by certain signs, in spite of myself, I see ahead.

Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.

the press is too often a distorting mirror, which deforms the people and events it represents, making them seem bigger or smaller than they really are.

When two texts, or two assertions, perhaps two ideas, are in contradiction, be ready to reconcile them rather than cancel one by the other; regard them as two different facets, or two successive stages, of the same reality, a reality convincingly human just because it is too complex.

One nourishes one's created characters with one's own substance: it's rather like the process of gestation. To give the character life, or to give him back life, it is of course necessary to fortify him by contributing something of one's own humanity, but it doesn't follow from that that the character is I, the writer, or that I am the character. The two entities remain distinct.