A loveless world is a dead world.

There is a metaphysical honour in ending the world's absurdity. Conquest or play-acting, multiple loves, absurd revolt are tributes that man pays to his dignity in a campaign in which he is defeated in advance.... War cannot be negated. One must live it or die of it. So it is with the absurd: it is a question of breathing with it, of recognizing its lessons and recovering their flesh. In this regard the absurd joy par excellence is creation. "Art and nothing but art", said Nietzsche, "we have art in order not to die of the truth."

I have always thought it would be easier to redeem a man steeped in vice and crime than a greedy, narrow-minded, pitiless merchant.

Je puis nier une chose sans me croire obligé de la salir ou de retirer aux autres le droit d'y croire.

After all perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent.

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

Knowing what [Christ] knew , knowing all about mankind--ah! who would have thought that the crime is not so much to make others die, but to die oneself--confronted day and night with his innocent crime, it became too difficult to go on. It was better to get it over with, to not defend himself, to die, in order not to be the only one to have survived, and to go elsewhere, where, perhaps, he would be supported.