If you lack the power to demoralize yourself along with the age, to go as low and as far, do not complain of being misunderstood by it.

True contact between beings is established only by mute presence, by apparent non-communication, by that mysterious and wordless exchange which resembles inward prayer.

A distant enemy is always preferable to one at the gate.

Losing love is so rich a philosophical ordeal that it makes a hairdresser into a rival of Socrates.

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.

It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.

Alone, even doing nothing, you do not waste your time. You do, almost always, in company. No encounter with yourself can be altogether sterile: Something necessarily emerges, even if only the hope of some day meeting yourself again.