The original writer is not he who refrains from imitating others, but he who can be imitated by none. - François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand

I can understand the cruel gaiety of Cervantes’s masterpiece only through a melancholy meditation: considering the whole of human existence, weighing good and evil, one might be tempted to wish for any accident that brings forgetfulness, as a means of escaping from oneself.

Memories of the wrath of the League and the clashes of the Fronde had favored the establishment of absolute monarchy; the governments of Louis XIV's despotism, when that great prince went to relax among his ancestors in Saint-Denis, made the yearning for freedom more bitter. The old monarchy had lasted six and a half centuries with its feudal and aristocratic liberties. How long had the state formed by Louis XIV lasted? One hundred and forty years. After that monarch's tomb, there were only two monuments of monarchy: the pillow of Louis XV's debauchery and Louis XVI's executioner's block.

if man is a mere mass of matter, there is in reality neither vice nor virtue, and of course morality is a mere sham

dacă omul este o simplă masă de materie, în realitate nu există nici viciu, nici virtute și, desigur, moralitatea este o simplă farsă