To conceal a want of real ideas, many make for themselves an imposing apparatus of long compound words, intricate flourishes and phrases, new and unheard-of expressions, all of which together furnish an extremely difficult jargon that sounds very learned. Yet with all this they say-precisely nothing.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.

Astrology furnishes a splendid proof of the contemptible subjectivity of men in consequence whereof they refer everything to themselves and from every idea at once go straight back to themselves. Astrology refers the course of celestial bodies to the miserable ego; it also establishes a connection between the comets in heaven and the squabbles and rascalities on earth.

Whatever torch we kindle, and whatever space it may illuminate, our horizon will always remain encircled by the depth of night.

The less one, as a result of objective or subjective conditions, has to come into contact with people, the better off one is for it.