Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.

Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress.

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die - and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

...the play of the toughest and most lucid mind are at the same time both lavished andsquandered.

God is not necessary to create culpability, or to punish. Our fellow men are enough for that, helped by ourselves.

But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.

It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end.