True moral elegance consists in the art of disguising one's victories as defeats.

Between Ennui and Ecstasy unwinds our whole experience of time.

Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil.

We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly.

Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted to it; this world is no less so, since here we regret paradise or anticipate another one. What to do? Where to go? Do nothing and go nowhere, easy enough.

Trees are massacred, houses go up — faces, faces everywhere. Man is spreading. Man is the cancer of the earth.

What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?