"There are forces, Lucius, infinitely more powerful than reason and science." " What are they?" asked Cotta. "Ignorance and folly," replied Aristaeus. - Anatole France

For you can always tell the gods by their appetite.

"I am but a miserable sinner, but I have found, in my long life, that the cenobite has no foe worse than sadness".

"You see, Dimitri and I, we are both suffering from ennui! We have still the match-boxes. But at last one gets tired even of match-boxes. Besides, our collection will soon be complete. And then what are we going to do?"

'Oh, Madame!' I exclaimed, touched by the moral unhappiness of this pretty person, 'if you only had a son, then you would know what to do. You would then learn the purpose of your life, and your thoughts would become at once more serious and yet more cheerful.'

'But I have a son,' she replied. 'He is a big boy; he is eleven years old, and he suffers from ennui like the rest of us. Yes, my George has ennui, too; he is tired of everything. It is very wretched.