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

There is no limit to suffering.

Philosophy is a corrective against sadness. Yet there still are people who believe in the profundity of philosophy!

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

We rightly scorn those who have no made use of their defects, who have not exploited their deficiencies, and have not been enriched by their losses, as we despise any man who does not suffer at being a man or simply at being. Hence no graver insult can be inflicted than to call someone 'happy', no greater flattery than to grant him a 'vein of melancholy'... This is because gaiety is link to no important action and because, except for the mad, no one laughs when he is alone.

Pursued by our origins... we all are.

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.