A decadent civilization compromises with its disease, cherishes the virus infecting it, loses its self-respect.

We have lost, being born, as much as we shall lose dying: Everything!

Under each formula lies a corpse.

I do not forgive myself for being born. It is as if creeping into this world, I had profaned a mystery, betrayed some momentous pledge, committed a fault of nameless gravity.

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.

Tragic paradox of freedom: the mediocre men who alone make its exercise possible cannot guarantee its duration.

I have tried to protect myself against men, to react against their madness to discern its source; I have listened and I have seen--and I have been afraid of acting for the same motives or for any motive whatever, of believing in the same ghosts or in any other ghost, of letting myself be engulfed by the same intoxications or by some other... afraid, in short, of raving in common and of expiring in a horde of ecstasies.