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

That arithmetic is the basest of all mental activities is proved by the fact that it is the only one that can be accomplished by a machine.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

The law of simplicity and naïveté applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is most sublime.

Although as a rule the absurd culminates, and it seems impossible for the voice of the individual ever to penetrate through the chorus of foolers and fooled, still there is left to the genuine works of all times a quite peculiar, silent, slow, and powerful influence; and as if by a miracle, we see them rise at last out of the turmoil like a balloon that floats up out of the thick atmosphere of this globe into purer regions. Having once arrived there, it remains at rest, and no one can any longer draw it down again.

Sexual passion is the cause of war and the end of peace, the basis of what is serious... and consequently the concentration of all desire

That a god like Jehovah should have created this world of misery and woe, out of pure caprice, and because he enjoyed doing it, and should then have clapped his hands in praise of his own work, and declared everything to be very good-that will not do at all!