A civilization begins to decline the moment Life becomes its sole obsession.

If, at the limit, you can rule without crime, you cannot do so without injustices.

Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires.

We have lost, being born, as much as we shall lose dying: Everything!

We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly.

We rightly scorn those who have no made use of their defects, who have not exploited their deficiencies, and have not been enriched by their losses, as we despise any man who does not suffer at being a man or simply at being. Hence no graver insult can be inflicted than to call someone 'happy', no greater flattery than to grant him a 'vein of melancholy'... This is because gaiety is link to no important action and because, except for the mad, no one laughs when he is alone.

Every profound dissatisfaction is of a religious nature: our failures derive from our incapacity to conceive of paradise and to aspire to it, as our discomforts from the fragility of our relations with the absolute.