“There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.”

“Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.”

“Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.”

“A nation which thinks that it is belief in God and not good law which makes people honest does not seem to me very advanced.”

“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, so all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals… What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to defer wise resolutions to the fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained.”

“The fact is that she was terribly undressed and I was extremely undressed too. The fact is that I still had my hand where she didn't have anything and she had hers where the same wasn't quite true of me. The fact is that I found myself underneath her and consequently she found herself on top of me.”

“Nous aimons, sans nous en douter, tout ce qui nous livre à nos penchants, nous séduit et excuse notre faiblesse.”