A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.

The contradictions the mind comes up against, these are the only realities, the criterion of the real. There is no contradiction in what is imaginary. Contradiction is the test of necessity.

What hope is there for innocence if it is not recognized?

To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.

The work of art which I do not make, none other will ever make.

There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul.

Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.