Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.

We would not be interested in human beings if we did not have the hope of someday meeting someone worse off than ourselves.

To possess a high degree of consciousness, to be always aware of yourself in relation to the world, to live in the permanent tension of knowledge, means to be lost for life.

A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.

The mind is the result of the torments the flesh undergoes or inflicts upon itself.

Everything turns on pain; the rest is accessory, even nonexistent, for we remember only what hurts. Painful sensations being the only real ones, it is virtually useless to experience others.