I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures.

If there were no affliction in this world we might think we were in paradise.

Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.

The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running.

He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate. Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice.