It is to the eccentrics that the world owes most of its knowledge.

Only one hour in the normal day is more pleasurable than the hour spent in bed with a book before going to sleep, and that is the hour spent in bed with a book after being called in the morning.

One should, I think, always give children money, for they will spend it for themselves far more profitably than we can ever spend it for them.

There's one thing about freedom ... each generation of people begins by thinking they've got it for the first time in history, and ends by being sure the generation younger than themselves have too much of it. It can't really always have been increasing at the rate people suppose, or there would be more of it by now.

The superior thing ... was to be late. Lateness showed that serene contempt for the illusion we call time which is so necessary to ensure the respect of others and oneself. Only the servile are punctual.

The poet has to make a synthesis out of the moral life of our time, and this life is lived at this moment on a political plane.

It is to the eccentrics that the world owes most of its knowledge.