The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.

I'm a libertine, but it's not my specialty.

The bond between a man and his profession is similar to that which ties him to his country; it is just as complex, often ambivalent, and in general it is understood completely only when it is broken: by exile or emigration in the case of one's country, by retirement in the case of a trade or profession.

My number is 174517; we have been baptized, we will carry the tattoo on our left arm until we die.

To accuse another of having weak kidneys, lungs, or heart, is not a crime; on the contrary, saying he has a weak brain is a crime. To be considered stupid and to be told so is more painful than being called gluttonous, mendacious, violent, lascivious, lazy, cowardly: every weakness, every vice, has found its defenders, its rhetoric, its ennoblement and exaltation, but stupidity hasn't.

A man who would mutilate himself is well damned, isn't he?

I am constantly amazed by man's inhumanity to man.