The greatest height of heroism to which an individual, like a people, can attain is to know how to face ridicule.

What is certain is that for thinking believers to-day, faith is, before all and above all, wishing that God may exist.

We men do nothing but lie and make ourselves important. Speech was invented for the purpose of magnifying all of our sensations and impressions — perhaps so that we could believe in them.

Martyrs create faith, faith does not create martyrs.

Cure yourself of the affliction of caring how you appear to others. Concern yourself only with how you appear before God, concern yourself only with the idea that God may have of you.

The truth is that my work - I was going to say my mission - is to shatter the faith of men here, there, and everywhere, faith in affirmation, faith in negation, and faith in abstention in faith, and this for the sake of faith in faith itself; it is to war against all those who submit, whether it be to Catholicism, or to rationalism, or to agnosticism; it is to make all men live the life of inquietude and passionate desire.

Use harms and even destroys beauty. The noblest function of an object is to be contemplated.