Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out everyday: Massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a space so confined without hating each other to death?

In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world.

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.

Melancholy redeems this universe, and yet it is melancholy that separates us from it.

Illusion begets and sustains the world; we do not destroy one without destroying the other. Which is what I do every day. An apparently ineffectual operation, since I must begin all over again the next day.

Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessors.

Each of us is born with a share of purity, predestined to be corrupted by our commerce with mankind, by that sin against solitude.