There are people who lie simply for the sake of lying.

Plurality which is not reduced to unity is confusion; unity which does not depend on plurality is tyranny.

Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.

The state of man is inconstancy, ennui, anxiety.

We like security: we like the pope to be infallible in matters of faith, and grave doctors to be so in moral questions so that we can feel reassured.

Human beings do not know their place and purpose. They have fallen from their true place, and lost their true purpose. They search everywhere for their place and purpose, with great anxiety. But they cannot find them because they are surrounded by darkness.

What a chimera then is man. What a novelty! What a monster... what a contradiction, what a prodigy