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

If you lack the power to demoralize yourself along with the age, to go as low and as far, do not complain of being misunderstood by it.

Were we to undertake an exhaustive self-scrutiny, disgust would paralyze us, we would be doomed to a thankless existence.

Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when belief withers.

Tolerance - the function of an extinguished ardor - tolerance cannot seduce the young.

I saw that philosophy had no power to make my life more bearable. Thus I lost my belief in philosophy.

Every profound dissatisfaction is of a religious nature: our failures derive from our incapacity to conceive of paradise and to aspire to it, as our discomforts from the fragility of our relations with the absolute.