Never to have occasion to take a position, to make up one's mind, or to define oneself - there is no wish I make more often.

Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil.

Doubt works deep within you like a disease or, even more effectively, like a faith.

All the concessions we make to Eros are holes in our desire for the absolute.

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.

Nothing sweeter than to drag oneself along behind events; and nothing more reasonable. But without a strong dose of madness, no initiative, no enterprise, no gesture. Reason: the rust of our vitality. It is the madman in us who forces us to adventure; once he abandons us, we are lost; everything depends on him, even our vegetative life; it is he who invites us, who obliges us to breathe, and it is also he who forces our blood to venture through our veins. Once he withdraws, we are alone indeed! We cannot be normal and alive at the same time.

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.