“A harmonious being cannot believe in God. Saints, criminals, and paupers have launched him, making him available to all unhappy people.”

“If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long ago. But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull banality of truth.”

“We tell our troubles to someone only to make him suffer, to make him assume them for himself. If we wanted to win him over, we would admit none but abstract worries, the only kind those who love us are eager to hear.”

“If it is true that God dislikes taking sides, I should feel no awkwardness in His presence, so pleased would I be to imitate Him, to be like Him, in everything, “without opinion.”

“I dream of an ideal confessor to tell everything to, spill it all: I dream of a blasé saint.”

“However much I have frequented the mystics, deep down I have always sided with the Devil; unable to equal him in power, I have tried to be worthy of him, at least, in insolence, acrimony, arbitrariness, and caprice.”

“The poor maidservant who used to say that she only believed in God when she had a toothache puts all theologians to shame.”