Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart's drama and the negative meaning of history.

The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.

Self-conscious rejection of the absolute is the best way to resist God; thus illusion, the substance of life, is saved.

Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.

Who Rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the oppressor turned slave.

When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, "What’s your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act." And they do calm down.

Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an impostor.