If each of us were to confess his most secret desire, the one that inspires all his plans, all his actions, he would say: "I want to be praised."

All great ideas should be followed by an exclamation mark - a warning signal similar to the skull and crossbones drawn on high-voltage transformers.

We change ideas like neckties.

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.

Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection. This is why with Chopin we feel so little like gods.

The more intense a spiritual leader's appetite for power, the more he is concerned to limit it to others.

I have tried to protect myself against men, to react against their madness to discern its source; I have listened and I have seen--and I have been afraid of acting for the same motives or for any motive whatever, of believing in the same ghosts or in any other ghost, of letting myself be engulfed by the same intoxications or by some other... afraid, in short, of raving in common and of expiring in a horde of ecstasies.