Is there a pleasure more subtly ambiguous than to watch the ruin of a myth?
What dilapidation of hearts in order to beget it, what excesses of intolerance in order to make it respected, what terror for those who do not assent to it, and what expense of hopes for those who watch it . . . expire!
Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when beliefs wither, when their articles and their precepts slacken, when their rules collapse. Every period’s ending is the mind’s paradise, for the mind regains its play and its whims only within an organism in utter dissolution.
The man who has the misfortune to belong to a period of creation and fecundity suffers its limitations and its ruts; slave of a unilateral vision, he is enclosed within a limited horizon.