You know very well that I no longer think. I am far too intelligent for that.

If you keep on excusing, you eventually give your blessing to the slave camp, to cowardly force, to organized executioners, to the cynicism of great political monsters; you finally hand over your brothers.

Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?" "Yes," I said.

For a man who loves power, competition from the gods is annoying. I have done away with that. I have proven to these illusory godsthat a man, if he has the will, can practice, without any apprenticeship, their ridiculous trade.

Ah cher ami, how poor in invention men are! They are They always think one commits suicide for a reason. But it's quite possible to commit suicide for two reasons. No, that never occurs to them. So what's the good of dying intentionally, of sacrificing yourself to the idea you want people to have of you? Once you are dead, they will take advantage of it to attribute idiotic or vulgar motives to your action. Martyrs, cher ami, must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood--never!

And indeed it could be said that once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of plague was ended.

Thus each of us had to be content to live only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky.