“We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. ...” — Blaise Pascal Quote

We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

The two things you cannot do effectively on stage are pray and copulate.

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.

No one wants to kill Schengen, but if it is only a fairweather system, then it cannot survive.

If I cannot overwhelm with my quality, I will overwhelm with my quantity.