The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.

Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules

how hard it must be to live only with what one knows and what one remembers, cut off from what one hopes for!

What is a firm hand to me, of what use to me is this astonishing power if I cannot change the order of things, if I cannot make the sun set in the east, that suffering diminish and that beings no longer die?

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

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.