One is and remains a slave as long as one is not cured of hoping.

The capital phenomenon, the most catastrophic disaster, is uninterrupted sleeplessness, that nothingness without release.

There was a time when time did not yet exist. … The rejection of birth is nothing but the nostalgia for this time before time.

To have committed every crime but that of being a father.

I am like a broken puppet whose eyes have fallen inside.

It has been a long time since philosophers have read men's souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we must not be surprised if they no longer matter much to us.

However much I have frequented the mystics, deep down I have always sided with the Devil; unable to equal him in power, I have tried to be worthy of him, at least, in insolence, acrimony, arbitrariness and caprice.