To succeed in chaining the multitude, you must seem to wear the same fetters.

If you want to know who controls you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize.

My life is a struggle.

You see, Mademoiselle, I have experience, I know the world. To pass the time, why don't you ask every passenger to tell you his life's story? And if there is a single one among them who has never cursed his life, who has not often told himself that he was the unhappiest of men, then you may throw me overboard, headfirst!

If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.