What does the truth matter? Haven't we mothers all given our sons a taste for lies, lies which from the cradle upwards lull them, ...reassure them, send them to sleep: lies as soft and warm as a breast!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Have you never been moved by poor men's fidelity, the image of you they form in their simple minds? Why should you always talk of ...their envy, without understanding that what they ask of you is not so much your worldly goods, as something very hard to define, which they themselves can put no name to; yet at times it consoles their loneliness; a dream of splendor, of magnificence, a tawdry dream, a poor man's dream--and yet God blesses it!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And what have you laymen made of hell? A kind of penal servitude for eternity, on the lines of your convict prisons on earth, to w...hich you condemn in advance all the wretched felons your police have hunted from the beginning--"enemies of society," as you call them. You're kind enough to include the blasphemers and the profane. What proud or reasonable man could stomach such a notion of God's justice? And when you find that notion inconvenient it's easy enough for you to put it on one side.... Hell is not to love any more, madame. Not to love any more!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »