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.

Nature is a burning and frigid, transparent and limited universe in which nothing is possible but everything is given.

A régime [Nazism] which invented a biological foreign policy was obviously acting against its own best interests. But at least it obeyed its own particular logic.

Believe me, for certain men at least, not taking what one doesn't desire is the hardest thing in the world.

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light.

What I believe to be true I must therefore preserve. What seems to me so obvious, even against me, I must support.

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