Afflicted with existence, each man endures like an animal the consequences which proceed from it. Thus, in a world where everything is detestable, hatred becomes huger than the world and, having transcended its object, cancels itself out.

Read day and night, devour books - these sleeping pills - not to know but to forget! Through books you can retrace your way back to the origins of spleen, discarding history and its illusions.

A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions.

We die in proportion to the words we fling around us.

I lost my sleep, and this is the greatest tragedy that can befall someone. It is much worse than sitting in prison.

Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion.

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.