Edmond de Goncourt

“If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.”

“Laughter is the mind's intonation. There are ways of laughing which have the sound of counterfeit coins.”

“People don't like the true and simple; they like fairy tales and humbug.”

“The reason for the sadness of this modern age and the men who live in it is that it looks for the truth in everything and finds it.”

“Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists... When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which...”