When a peasant begins to feel the need for instruction, he usually becomes fiercely calculating.

The obligation of a writer is to live out loud.

I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul.

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

The thought is a deed. Of all deeds she fertilizes the world most.

Every wave is a watersprite 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.

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

I know nothing sadder than a hunchback in love or an ugly woman full of romantic ideals.

The more grievous the sin, the greater the repentance, God was bidding His time.

Ever since the morning, Pierre had beheld many frightful sufferings in that woeful white train. But none had so distressed his soul as did that wretched female skeleton, liquefying in the midst of its lace and its millions.