The curtain of the universe is moth-eaten, and through its holes we see nothing now but mask and ghost.

We are born to exist, not to know, to be, not to assert ourselves.

Tolerance cannot seduce the young.

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

We die in proportion to the words we fling around us.

Those who believe in their truth -- the only ones whose imprint is retained by the memory of men -- leave the earth behind them strewn with corpses. Religions number in their ledgers more murders than the bloodiest tyrannies account for, and those whom humanity has called divine far surpass the most conscientious murderers in their thirst for slaughter.

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.