The knight departing for new adventures offends his lady, yet she has nothing but contempt for him if he remains at her feet.

That a whole part of the middle class detests me... is utterly normal. I would be troubled if the contrary were true.

Work would be terribly boring if one did not play the game all out, passionately.

The day knowledge was preferred to wisdom and mere usefulness to beauty. . . . Only a moral revolution -- not a social or a political revolution -- only a moral revolution would lead man back to his lost truth.

We always come back to the same vicious circle - an extreme degree of material or intellectual poverty does away with the means of alleviating it.

it is not the inferiority of women that has caused their historical insignificance; it is rather their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority.

To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.