I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.

The most exhausting effort in my life has been to suppress my own nature in order to make it serve my biggest plans.

If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

A liking for truth at any cost is a passion that spares nothing and that nothing resists. It's a vice, at times a comfort, or a selfishness.

But what does it mean, the plague? It's life, that's all.

The act of love . . . is a confession. Selfishness screams aloud, vanity shows off, or else true generosity reveals itself.

What will be left of the power of example if it is proved that capital punishment has another power, and a very real one, which degrades men to the point of shame, madness, and murder?