In Italian museums are sometimes found little painted screens that the priest used to hold in front of the face of condemned men to hide the scaffold from them.

When love ceases to be tragic it is something else and the individual again throws himself in search of tragedy.

There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.

Big tears of frustration and exhaustion were streaming down his cheeks. But because of all the wrinkles, they weren't dripping off. They spread out and ran together again, leaving a watery film over his ruined face.

Everybody knows life isn't worth living.

For ever, I shall be a stranger to myself.

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.