Pierre Loti

“There are beings who come into this world, from time to time, with a mission to struggle against extreme evil, and to perish in the struggle.”

“How many of us have a soul which is seam-rent, and which we are conscious of dragging after us, like a dismasted ship, through the currents of life!”

“There is for me in this world only one great ruin, and that is Palmyra.”

“The more things you know, or pretend to know, the more powerful you are. It doesn't matter if things are true. What counts, remember, is to possess a secret.”

“For the first time I was learning how much easier it is to leave than to be left.”

“My brain is like a sponge that has to be squeezed to get the best of it.”

“All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.”

“What should I have known of life, of the world, if I had not been a soldier?”

“And it is always the same: what I am seeing is already a memory.”

“To die, and to be loved no more...”