“Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.”

Perhaps the apparent favor of the universe is no more than the crocodile grin of a Doberman breathing hard and about to be hungry?

Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.

I have committed the worst of sins one can commit. I have not been happy.

Your unforgivable sins do not allow you to see my splendor.

It also occurred to him that throughout history, humankind has told two stories: the story of a lost ship sailing the Mediterranean seas in quest of a beloved isle, and the story of a god who allows himself to be crucified on Golgotha.

So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

I gazed at every mirror on the planet, not one gave back my reflection.

Only in the present do things happen.

Doubt is one of the names of intelligence.

Time, which despoils castles, enriches verses.

Each thing implies the universe.

All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.

Israelites, Christians and Muslims profess immortality, but the veneration they render this world proves they believe only in it, since they destine all other worlds, in infinite number, to be its reward or punishment.

Soccer is popular because stupidity is popular.

Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love.

Terror made me cruel.

Who knows, my God, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty?

What is it the Bible teaches us? – raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? – to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.

There is only one unpardonable sin–deliberate cruelty. All else can be forgiven.

He was attached by ties stronger than reason could break — chains, forged by habit, which it would be cruel to attempt to loosen.

Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes.

Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.