Purely historical thought is therefore nihilistic: it wholeheartedly accepts the evil of history and in this way is opposed to rebellion.

Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I.

Love is the kind of illness that does not spare the intelligent or the dull.

I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.

In art, rebellion is consummated and perpetuated in the act of real creation, not in criticism or commentary.

At that moment he knew what his mother was thinking, and that she loved him. But he knew, too, that to love someone means relatively little; or, rather, that love is never strong enough to find the words befitting it. Thus he and his mother would always love each other silently. And one day she--or he--would die, without ever, all their lives long, having gone farther than this by way of making their affection known.

If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of acompletely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.