“The wisest among us is very lucky never to have met the woman, be she beautiful or ugly, intelligent or stupid, who could drive him crazy enough to be fit to be put into an asylum.”

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

We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man’s afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures.

Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.

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

If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can’t deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge, observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.

Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.

There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.

Distance is a great promoter of admiration.

When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.

What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.

The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children.

Does not vanity itself cease to be blamable, is it not even ennobled, when it is directed to laudable objects, when it confines itself to prompting us to great and generous actions?

We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.

Poetry needs something on the scale of the grand, the barbarous, the savage.

Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.

Each day is a drive through history.

Reasoning is the pastime of my whole household, and all this reasoning has driven out Reason.

Art can be very political but that can’t be the purpose of art, it can’t be the driving force. It isn’t with any of the books that I love, anyway.

Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.

The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.

The history of colonialism is long and bloody. And it continues today, in the shape of Western arrogance vis-à-vis everyone else. “Us against the rest of the world” is the formula that drives the West.

A real theatrical experience shakes the calm of the senses, liberates the compressed unconscious and drives towards a kind of potential revolt.

Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue.