Ideas come as you walk, Nietzsche said. Walking dissipates thoughts, Shankara taught.

Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them.

Democracy: a festival of mediocrity.

An existence transfigured by failure.

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

Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later, he will regret not having left it intact.

Only one endowed with restless vitality is susceptible to pessimism. You become a pessimist-a demonic, elemental, bestial pessimist-only when life has been defeated many times in its fight against depression.