Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.
You cannot protect your solitude if you cannot make yourself odious.
Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.
We derive our vitality from our store of madness.
Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than a puppet. Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than by paradise.
Melancholy redeems this universe, and yet it is melancholy that separates us from it.