In the hours without sleep, each moment is so full and so vacant that it suggests itself as a rival of Time.

I am like a broken puppet whose eyes have fallen inside.

I try--without success--to stop finding reasons for vanity in anything. When I happen to manage it nonetheless, I feel that I no longer belong to the mortal gang. I am above everything then, above the gods themselves. Perhaps that is what death is: a sensation of great, of extreme superiority.

Doubt works deep within you like a disease or, even more effectively, like a faith.

Mind, even more deadly to empires than to individuals, erodes them, compromises their solidity.

My enthusiasms...constitute my reserves, my unexploited resources, perhaps my future.

What is pity but the vice of kindness.