Sometimes it happens that the most insane thought, the most impossible conception, will become so fixed in one's head that at length one believes the thought or the conception to be reality. Moreover,...
Let me be cursed, let me be base and vile, but let me also kiss the hem of that garment in which my God is clothed; let me be following the devil at the same time, but still I am also your son, Lord,...
I'm drunk but truthful.
I believe he was feeling a bit nervous. Possibly it was my costume that took him aback. I was dressed quite well, even elegantly, and looked as if I belonged to the best society.
I am told that the proximity of punishment arouses real repentance in the criminal and sometimes awakens a feeling of genuine remorse in the most hardened heart; I am told this is due to fear.
I am a wicked man... But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing, precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious ever...
Right or wrong, it's very pleasant to break something from time to time.
It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader. The sky was so starry, so bright that, looking at it, one could not help asking oneself whether ill-humoured...
Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And...
The queen who mended her stockings in prison must have looked every inch a queen and even more a queen than at sumptuous banquets and levees.
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
We obtained literature by our own efforts, it is a product of our own life, and that is why we love it so much and hold it so dear, why we pin our hopes on it.
You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won't be wiser?
I've always wanted all or nothing!
Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my capacity for life....
Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may th...
Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect f...
I tell you that man has no more tormenting care than to find someone to whom he can hand over as quickly as possible that gift of freedom with which the miserable creature is born. But he alone can ta...
هناك أمور يصعب شرحها. إن هذا الفلاح يتصور أن التلاميذ يُجلدون في المدرسة، وأن الأمور يجب أن تكون كذلك. ما تلميذ لا يُجلد. فلو قلت له بفظاظة إننا لا نُجلد في المدرسة لما فهم شيئا ولأحزنه ذلك
إنَّ المرء لتبرأُ نفسهُ وتشفى حينَ يعيشُ مع الأطفال!