I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else.

In our well-policed society we recognize that an illness is serious from the fact that we don't dare speak of it directly.

Je puis nier une chose sans me croire obligé de la salir ou de retirer aux autres le droit d'y croire.

The society of merchants can be defined as a society in which things disappear in favor of signs. When a ruling class measures its fortunes, not by the acre of land or the ingot of gold, but by the number of figures corresponding ideally to a certain number of exchange operations, it thereby condemns itself to setting a certain kind of humbug at the center of its experience and its universe. A society founded on signs is, in its essence, an artificial society in which man's carnal truth is handled as something artificial.

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live as if there isn't and to die to find out that there is.

A sub-clerk in the post-office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them.