In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.

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.

Insomnia is a vertiginous lucidity that can convert paradise itself into a place of torture.

A distant enemy is always preferable to one at the gate.

The wise man, the sage, is hostile to the new. Disabused, he abdicates: that is his form of protest.

Life without utopia is suffocating, for the multitude at least: threatened otherwise with petrifaction, the world must have a new madness.

I have always struggled, with the sole intention of ceasing to struggle. Result: zero.