“If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.”

“With the exception of professional rationalists, today people despair of true knowledge. If only the significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be he history of its successive regrets and its impotences.”

“When one has no character, one HAS to apply a method. Here it did wonders incontrovertibly, and I am living on the site of one of the greatest crimes in human history.”

“There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.”

“If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.”

“You see, Mersualt, all the misery and cruelty of our civilisation can be measured by this one stupid axiom: happy nations have no history.”

“The human heart has a tiresome tendency to label as fate only what crushes it. But happiness likewise, in its way, is without reason, since it is inevitable.”