Democracy: a festival of mediocrity.

What every man who loves his country hopes for in his inmost heart: the suppression of half his compatriots.

The refutation of suicide: is it not inelegant to abandon a world which has so willingly put itself at the service of our melancholy?

I lost my sleep, and this is the greatest tragedy that can befall someone. It is much worse than sitting in prison.

Much more than our other needs and endeavors, it is sexuality that puts us on an even footing with our kind: the more we practice it, the more we become like everyone else: it is in the performance of a reputedly bestial function that we prove our status as citizens: nothing is more public than the sexual act.

Only one endowed with restless vitality is susceptible to pessimism. You become a pessimist-a demonic, elemental, bestial pessimist-only when life has been defeated many times in its fight against depression.

Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.