An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts.

Can one be a saint if God does not exist? That is the only concrete problem I know of today.

The future is the only kind of property that the masters willingly concede to the slaves.

If we understood the enigmas of life there would be no need for art.

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

I have always felt I lived on the high seas, threatened, at the heart of a royal happiness.

You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.