...Though we chisel away as best we can at the mysterious block from which our life is made, the black vein of destiny continually reappears.

There are moments when a rope's end, a pole, the branch of the tree, is life itself, and it is a frightful thing to see a living being lose his hold upon it, and fall like a ripe fruit.

Nobody knows like a woman how to say things at the same time sweet and profound. Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is all of Heaven.

If the infinite had no me, then me would be its limit. It would not be the infinite, therefore it would not be.

For the rest, he was the same to all men, the fashionable world and the ordinary people. He judged nothing in haste, or without taking account of the cirumstances. He said, 'Let me see how the fault arose.

A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.

The aim of art is almost divine: to bring to life again if it is writing history, to create if it is writing poetry.