The great courage is to stare as squarely at the light as at death.

Still, obviously, one can't be sensible all the time.

Likewise and during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it.

All that remains is a fate whose outcome alone is fatal. Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty. A world remains of which man is the sole master. What bound him was the illusion of another world.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.

The slave and those whose present life is miserable and who can find no consolation in the heavens are assured that at least the future belongs to them. The future is the only kind of property that the masters willingly concede to the slaves.