I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?

We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.

We cannot wish for that we know not.

In France every man is either an anvil or a hammer; he is a beater or must be beaten.

For seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm.

Prejudice is opinion without judgement.

The Deluge: A punishment inflicted on the human race by an all-knowing God, who, through not having foreseen the wickedness of men, repented of having made them, and drowned them once for all to make them better - an act which, as we all know, was accompanied by the greatest success.