Love disposes one to religiosity. I knew an atheist who wished to go to church one evening to exchange vows with his mistress; through scruples, she refused.
Intelligence is perhaps but a malady,—a beautiful malady; the oyster's pearl.
There are anti-clericals who are in reality somewhat excessive Christians.
Is not the poet who recites his verses before an audience really the nightingale singing his song? Not quite. The instinct has gone astray: sexual mimicry, without actual application. The useful has become a game: and this is the whole history of civilization.
"How many contradictions!"
"Eh! If I loaded my wagon all on the same side, I'd tumble it over."
Persons full of morality preach. Everything that they judge criminal I either practise or think. And nevertheless....
Love ye one another. How do that, without knowing one another? No, no; a little modesty, a little dignity.
It is shameful to be ashamed of one's pleasures.
To be above everything. To scorn everything and love everything. To know that there is nothing, and that this nothing, none the less, contains everything.
In order to be true, a novel must be false.