And when someone suggests you believe in a proposition, you must first examine it to see whether it is acceptable, because our reason was created by God, and whatever pleases our reason can but please divine reason, of which, for that matter, we know only what we infer from the processes of our own reason by analogy and often by negation.

You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery. Hatred is the true primordial passion. It is love that's abnormal. That is why Christ was killed: he spoke against nature. You don't love someone for your whole life - that impossible hope is the source of adultery, matricide, betrayal of friends ... But you can hate someone for your whole life - provided he's always there to keep your hatred alive. Hatred warms the heart.

A sure sign of a lunatic is that sooner or later, he brings up the Templars.

How beautiful was the spectacle of nature not yet touched by the often perverse wisdom of man!

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.

A novel is a machine for generating interpretations.

What we honor as prudence in our elders is simply panic in action.