Each of us is born with a share of purity, predestined to be corrupted by our commerce with mankind, by that sin against solitude.

To claim you are more detached, more alien to everything than anyone, and to be merely a fanatic of indifference!

All that shimmers on the surface of the world, all that we call interesting, is the fruit of ignorance and inebriation.

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

Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment.

Thinking should be like musical meditation. Has any philosopher pursued a thought to its limits the way Bach or Beethoven develop and exhaust a musical theme? Even after having read the most profound thinkers, one still feels the need to begin anew. Only music gives definitive answers.

I am the beast with a contorted grin, contracting down to illusion and dilating toward infinity, both growing and dying, delightfully suspended between hope for nothing and despair of everything, brought up among perfumes and poisons, consumed with love and hatred, killed by lights and shadows. My symbol is death of light and the flame of death. Sparks die in me only to be reborn as thunder and lightning. Darkness itself glows in me.