“There are temptations more attractive than angels. Liberty, Patriotism, the good of humanity – words like that are the silver scales of the Tempter’s flaming wings”

“One must not trifle with love.”

“Perfection does not exist. To understand this is the triumph of human intelligence to expect to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.”

“Experience is the name men give to their follies or their sorrows.”

“Christianity ruined emperors but saved peoples.”

“Hast thou found out, Voltaire, that it is bliss to die, And does thy hideous smile over thy bleached bones fly?”

“There is no worse sorrow than remembering happiness in the day of sorrow.”

“Look at the sun! It’s dry, it’s dead, it needs a drink, it wants blood! And I’ll give it blood!”

“There are temptations more attractive than angels. Liberty, Patriotism, the good of humanity – words like that are the silver scales of the Tempter’s flaming wings”

“Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!”

“The blood of my motherland waters a magic plant that cures all ills. That plant is art, and sometimes art needs corruption as a kind of fertilizer”