Damn these human beings; if I had invented them I would go hide my head in a bag.

The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve.

Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

It's better to be an optimist who is sometimes wrong than a pessimist who is always right

To me [Edgar Allen Poe's] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.