What to think of other people? I ask myself this question each time I make a new acquaintance. So strange does it seem to me that we exist, and that we consent to exist.

We dread the future only when we are not sure we can kill ourselves when we want to.

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.

One cannot live without motives. I have no motives left, and I am living.

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.

Alone, even doing nothing, you do not waste your time. You do, almost always, in company. No encounter with yourself can be altogether sterile: Something necessarily emerges, even if only the hope of some day meeting yourself again.

I dream of a language whose words, like fists, would fracture jaws.