Ma vie est une énigme dont ton nom est le mot. (My life is an enigma, of which your name is the word.)

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.

We shall look on crime as a disease, and its physicians shall displace the judges, its hospitals displace the Galleys. Liberty and health shall be alike. We shall pour balm and oil where we formerly applied iron and fire; evil will be treated in charity, instead of in anger. This change will be simple and sublime.

...The girls chirped and chatted like uncaged warblers. They were delirious with joy... Intoxications of life’s morning! Enchanted years! The wing of a dragonfly trembles! Oh, reader, whoever you may be, do you have such memories? Have you walked in the underbrush, pushing aside branches for the charming head behind you? Have you slid laughing, down some slope wet with rain, with the woman you loved?

Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.

The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal.

A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.