No human beings are more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief

Old age, after all, is merely the punishment for having lived.

My mission is to see things as they are. Exactly contrary of a mission.

If each of us were to confess his most secret desire, the one that inspires all his plans, all his actions, he would say: "I want to be praised."

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.

The wise man, the sage, is hostile to the new. Disabused, he abdicates: that is his form of protest.

True moral elegance consists in the art of disguising one's victories as defeats.