“The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.”

“Monsieur Bienvenu was simply a man who accepted these mysterious questions...and who had in his soul a deep respect for the mystery which enveloped them.”

“Before him he saw two roads, both equally straight; but he did see two; and that terrified him--he who had never in his life known anything but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory.”

“Monsieur' to a convict is a glass of water to a man dying of thirst at sea; ignominy thirsts for respect.”

“After the dazzling orgies in form and color of the eighteenth century, art was put on a diet, and allowed nothing but the straight line. This sort of progress ended in ugliness. Art reduced to a skeleton, was the result. This was the advantage of this kind of wisdom and abstinence; the style was so sober that it became lean.”

“where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.”

“Anger may be foolish and absurd, and one may be wrongly irritated, but a man never feels outraged unless in some respect he is fundamentally right.”