It is the peculiarity of grief to bring out the childish side of man.

There is nothing like a dream to create the future.

It is not enough to be happy, one must be content.

Idleness, pleasure, what abysses! To do nothing is a dreary course to take, be sure of it. To live idle upon the substance of society! To be useless, that is to say, noxious! This leads straight to the lowest depth of misery.

Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched.

With a tiny bit of effort, the nettle would be useful; if you neglect it, it becomes a pest. So then we kill it. How many men are like nettles My friends, there is no such thing as a weed and no such thing as a bad man. There are only bad cultivators.

On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die.