We need God, not in order to understand the why, but in order to feel and sustain the ultimate wherefore, to give a meaning to the universe.

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

True science teaches, above all, to doubt and be ignorant.

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

For it is the suffering flesh, it is suffering, it is death, that lovers perpetuate upon the earth. Love is at once the brother, son, and father of death, which is its sister, mother, and daughter. And thus it is that in the depth of love there is a depth

Men shout to avoid listening to one another.

Is there anything more terrible than a "call"? It affords an occasion for the exchange of the most threadbare commonplaces. Calls and the theatre are the two great centers for the propagation of platitudes.