If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy.

There is nothing abstract about pain. It is specific, it is real, and, when it is intense, it is world destroying.

I have not stopped loving that which is sacred in this world.

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.

From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all. But whether or not one can live with one's passions, whether or not one can accept their law, which is to burn the heart they simultaneously exalt - that is the whole question.

Then we understand that rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love. Those who find no rest in God or in history are condemned to live for those who, like themselves, cannot live; in fact, for the humiliated.

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.