A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.

Each time I fail to think about death, I have the impression of cheating, of deceiving someone in me.

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.

I saw that philosophy had no power to make my life more bearable. Thus I lost my belief in philosophy.

No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.

What necessity impels a writer who has produced fifty books to write still one more? Why this proliferation, this fear of being forgotten, this debased coquetry?

The more one has suffered, the less one demands. To protest is a sign one has traversed no hell.