“Prejudices are the props of civilization.”

Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented.

I can’t expect others to share my virtues. It’s good enough for me if they share my vices.

But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty? I live according to twenty-year-old habits.

God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.

Every instant of our lives is essentially irreplaceable: you must know this in order to concentrate on life.

I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun warmed, flower bordered path.

There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.

The most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling.

Only fools don’t contradict themselves.

Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.

Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.

Art begins with resistance – at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.

Please do not understand me too quickly.

Too chaste a youth leads to a dissolute old age.

Seize from every moment its unique novelty and do not prepare your joys.

Dare to be yourself.

Scopes isn’t on trial; civilization is on trial.

Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.

Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to protect his own rights; American civilization will teach him to respect the rights of others.

Science is the most reliable guide for civilization, for life, for success in the world. Searching a guide other than the science is meaning carelessness, ignorance and heresy.

Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity.

It was very relaxing to be away from civilization, and this bothered me. I should not have found the loneliness so welcoming.

Since the same human mire remains beneath, does not all civilization reduce itself to the superiority of smelling nice and living well?

Speech is civilization itself.