True eloquence forgoes eloquence.

Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not -- they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry -- I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate this moral agoraphobia -- it's the worst kind of cowardice. You can't create something without being alone. But who's trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life.

The individual person is more interesting than people in general; he and not they is the one whom God created in His image.

We no longer admit any other truth than that which is expedient; for there is no worse error than the truth that may weaken the arm that is fighting.

The difficulty comes from this, that Christianity (Christian orthodoxy) is exclusive and that belief in its truth excludes belief in any other truth. It does not absorb; it repulses.

An artist cannot get along without a public; and when the public is absent, what does he do? He invents it, and turning his back on his age, he looks toward the future for what the present denies.

To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.