If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.

And, in the warm silence, in the peaceful solitude of the study, Clotilde smiled down at the baby who was still sucking - his little arm in the air, pointing upwards, a symbol of hope and life.

Her son would be incomparably handsome, good and powerful. He would be the expected Messiah; it is fortunate for humanity that all mothers have this pathetic faith, without it mankind would not have the ever-renascent strength to go on living.

Never subject to the rules, believing that the correct judgement and healthy nature keep her in the honesty she lived in.

Did not one spend the first half of one's days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?

Essentially, Doctor Pascal's only faith was his faith in life. Life was the unique manifestation of the divine. Life was God, the great motive power, the soul of the universe. And the sole instrument of life was heredity, which made the world; so that if one could only understand it, master it and make it do one's bidding, one could remake the world at will.

If the world is to die in misery, let it at least go out with a song on its lips, and pity for itself.

Yes! live life with every fibre of one's being, surrender oneself to it, with no thoughts of rebellion, without deluding oneself that one can improve it and render it painless.