In most cases we attach ourselves to in order to take revenge on life, to punish it, to signify we can do without it, that we have found something better, and we also attach ourselves to God in horror of men.

The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.

Read day and night, devour books - these sleeping pills - not to know but to forget! Through books you can retrace your way back to the origins of spleen, discarding history and its illusions.

What surrounds us we endure better for giving it a name - and moving on.

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

When every man has realized that his birth is a defeat, existence, endurable at last, will seem like the day after a surrender, like the relief and the repose of the conquered.

He who hates himself is not humble.