Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.

All wanting comes from need, therefore from lack, therefore from suffering.

Human life, like all inferior goods, is covered on the outside with a false glitter; what suffers always conceals itself.

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher.

Every satisfaction he attains lays the seeds of some new desire, so that there is no end to the wishes of each individual will.

I believe that when death closes our eyes we shall awaken to a light, of which our sunlight is but the shadow.

Every hero is a Samson. The strong man succumbs to the intrigues of the weak and the many; and if in the end he loses all patience he crushes both them and himself.