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

Just as ecstasy purifies you of the particular and the contingent, leaving nothing except light and darkness, so insomnia kills off the multiplicity and diversity of the world, leaving you prey to your private obsessions.

Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.

By what aberration has suicide, the only truly normal action, become the attribute of the flawed?

As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals? It’s all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?

Tragic paradox of freedom: the mediocre men who alone make its exercise possible cannot guarantee its duration.

To claim you are more detached, more alien to everything than anyone, and to be merely a fanatic of indifference!