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.

Tragic paradox of freedom: the mediocre men who alone make its exercise possible cannot guarantee its duration.

Woes and wonders of power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea.

Tyrants are always assassinated too late. That is their great excuse.

The Art of Love: knowing how to combine the temperament of a vampire with the discretion of an anemone.

I seem to myself, among civilized men, an intruder, a troglodyte enamored of decrepitude, plunged into subversive prayers.

Every profound dissatisfaction is of a religious nature: our failures derive from our incapacity to conceive of paradise and to aspire to it, as our discomforts from the fragility of our relations with the absolute.