To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing.

I am too far away from what I love and my distance is without remedy.

All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it's up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences. That may sound simple to the point of childishness; I can't judge if it's simple, but I know it's true.

Youth is above all a collection of possibilities.

Does the end justify the means? That is possible. But what will justify the end? To that question, which historical thought leaves pending, rebellion replies: the means.

... unhappiness is like marriage. We believe we chose it, but then it is choosing us. That is how it is, we can do nothing about it.

If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.