the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life.

What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible.

A library's ideal function is to be a little bit like a bouquiniste's stall, a place for trouvailles.

We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death.

But it has often happened that I have found the most seductive depictions of sin in the pages of those very men of incorruptible virtue who condemned their spell and their effects.

If somebody writes a book and doesn't care for the survival of that book, he's an imbecile.

It is obvious that the newspaper produces the opinion of the readers.