A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.

Self-conscious rejection of the absolute is the best way to resist God; thus illusion, the substance of life, is saved.

The literary man? An indiscreet man, who devaluates his miseries, divulges them, tells them like so many beads: immodesty-the sideshow of second thoughts-is his rule; he offers himself.

Losing love is so rich a philosophical ordeal that it makes a hairdresser into a rival of Socrates.

We inhabit a language rather than a country.

As the years pass, the number of those we can communicate with diminishes. When there is no longer anyone to talk to, at last we will be as we were before stooping to a name.

"The Holy Ghost," Luther instructs us, "is not a skeptic." Not everyone can be, and that is really too bad.