If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is certainly God.

For you who no longer possess it, freedom is everything, for us who do, it is merely an illusion.

All philosophers should end their days at Pythia's feet. There is only one philosophy, that of unique moments.

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.

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

The literary man? An indiscreet man, who devaluates his miseries, divulges them, tells them like so many beads: immodesty-the sideshow of second thoughts-is his rule; he offers himself.

A self-respecting man is a man without a country. A fatherland is birdlime.