There is as much vanity in self-scourgings as in self-justification.

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

invaders always destroy libraries.

Nationalism will keep its venom until we succeed in creating an image of the nations of the whole world as so many provinces.

to grow old is to have taken away, one by one, all gifts of life, the food and wine, the music and the company. ... the gods unloose, one by one, the mortal fingers that cling to the edge of the table.

An animal is not cruel; it lives wholly in the instant leap on its prey, in the present taste of marrow or blood. Cruelty begins with the memory, and the pleasures of the memory are impure; they draw their strength along levels where no sun has reached.

In France, even heresy rapidly hardens into dogma.