“Has science ever retreated? No! It is Catholicism which has always retreated before her, and will always be forced to retreat.”

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

Man’s highest duty is to protect animals from cruelty.

Every wave is a water sprite who swims in the current, each current is a path which snakes towards my palace, and my palace is fluidly built at the bottom of the lake, in the triangle of earth, fire and water.

Nothing develops intelligence like travel.

Did science promise happiness? I do not believe it. It promised truth, and the question is to know if we will ever make happiness with truth.

I do not despair in the least of ultimate triumph. I repeat it with intense conviction.

In Paris, everything’s for sale: wise virgins, foolish virgins, truth and lies, tears and smiles.

Truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it.

Did not one spend the first half of one’s days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?

I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don’t care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.

If you shut up truth, and bury it underground, it will but grow.

These young people naturally grow up with ideas different from ours, for they are born for times when we shall no longer be here

Why then should money be blamed for all the dirt and crimes it causes? For is love less filthy – love which creates life?

Over all crowds there seems to float a vague distress, an atmosphere of pervasive melancholy, as if any large gathering of people creates an aura of terror and pity.

Through the centuries, the history of peoples is but a lesson in mutual tolerance.

Art for me…is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual, outside of all the rules and all the demands of society.

True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.

Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.

In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.

Religion is not the belief there is a god. Religion is the belief god tells you what to do.

The most common mistake Christians make in worship today is seeking an experience rather than seeking God.

Not believing in anything is also a religion .

What we need is not a religion that is right where we are right, but one that is right where we are wrong.

I don’t normally talk about my religion publicly because I don’t want people to associate me and my flaws with this beautiful thing. And I believe it is beautiful religion if you learn it the right way.