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.

If you love life you also love the past, because it is the present as it has survived in memory." Translation by David Downie

nothing is slower than the true birth of a man

age means nothing. If anything I feel that I'm still a child: eternity and childhood are my ages.

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

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

Any truth creates a scandal.