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.

True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself, hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person.

Slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or the taste of the superhuman, cripple judgment. On the day when crime puts on the apparel of innocence, through a curious reversal peculiar to our age, it is innocence that is called on to justify itself. The purpose of this essay is to accept and study that strange challenge.

In every guilty man, there is some innocence. This makes every absolute condemnation revolting.

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them.

Everybody knows life isn't worth living.