he's incapable of suffering for a long time, or being happy for a long time. Which means that he's incapable of anything really worth while.

Without memories, without hope, they lived for the moment only. indeed, the here and now had come to mean everything to them. For there is no denying that the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. Naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was left us but a series of present moments.

There are people who vindicate the world, who help others live just by their presence.

Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and historical tasks is an actual or potential assassin.

Greatness consists in trying to be great. There is no other way.

At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise . . . that denseness and that strangeness of the world is absurd.

Absolute justice is achieved by the suppression of all contradiction, therefore it destroys freedom.