Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.

Just as ecstasy purifies you of the particular and the contingent, leaving nothing except light and darkness, so insomnia kills off the multiplicity and diversity of the world, leaving you prey to your private obsessions.

What a pity that 'nothingness' has been devalued by an abuse of it made by philosophers unworthy of it!

The capital phenomenon, the most catastrophic disaster, is uninterrupted sleeplessness, that nothingness without release.

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.

Shame on the man who goes to his grave escorted by the miserable hopes that have kept him alive.

Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.