Gaiety — a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine. - Denis Diderot

It is better to reveal a weakness than allow oneself be suspected of a vice.

Because, without knowing what is written up above, none of us knows what we want or what we are doing, and we follow our whims which we call reason, or our reason which is often nothing but a dangerous whim which sometimes turns out well, sometimes badly.

How did they meet? By chance, like everyone else. What were their names? What’s it to you? Where did they come from? The nearest place. Where were they going? Do we know where we’re going? What did they say? The master said nothing; and Jacques said that his captain said that everything good and bad that happens to us down here was written up there.