Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it.

Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.

To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.

Our patriotism comes straight from the Romans. This is why French children are encouraged to seek inspiration for it in Corneille. It is a pagan virtue, if these two words are compatible. The word pagan, when applied to Rome, early possesses the significance charged with horror which the early Christian controversialists gave it. The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people; not idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to us in the form of patriotism.

The real stumbling-block of totalitarian regimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom of thought; it is men's inability to stand the physical and nervous strain of a permanent state of excitement, except during a few years of their youth.

As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.