One hardly saves a world without ruling it.

If, at the limit, you can rule without crime, you cannot do so without injustices.

In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world.

Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted to it; this world is no less so, since here we regret paradise or anticipate another one. What to do? where to go? Do nothing and go nowhere, easy enough.

Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.

We die in proportion to the words we fling around us.