One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.

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.

…but all day long I would be training myself to think, to understand, to criticize, to know myself; I was seeking for the absolute truth: this preoccupation did not exactly encourage polite conversation.

A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male.

In order to be an artist, one must be deeply rooted in the society.

Because we are separated everything separates us, even our efforts to join each other.

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