The universal view melts things into a blur.

One hardly saves a world without ruling it.

Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?

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

A book is a suicide postponed.

Life without utopia is suffocating, for the multitude at least: threatened otherwise with petrifaction, the world must have a new madness.

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