“The need to be right - the sign of a vulgar mind.”

“They went on living in poverty, though they were no longer in need, but they were set in their ways, and they looked on life with a resigned suspicion; they loved it as animals do, but they knew from experience that it would regularly give birth to disaster without even showing any sign that it was carrying it.”

“You know, a man always judges himself by the balance he can strike between the needs of his body and the demands of his mind. You're judging yourself now, Mersaut, and you don't like the sentence.”

“I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.”

“As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”

“Liberty is the right not to lie.”

“Integrity has no need of rules.”