We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

Happiness implied a choice, and within that choice a concerted will, a lucid desire.

I realized people would soon forget me once I was dead. I couldn't even say that this was hard to stomach; really, there's no idea to which one doesn't get acclimatized in time.

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.

Absolute virtue is impossible and the republic of forgiveness leads, with implacable logic, to the republic of the guillotine.

I understood, by dint of digging into my memories, that modesty helped me to shine, humility helped me to triumph and virtue to oppress.