We cannot be normal and alive at the same time.

Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our kind, precisely because they resemble us.

I have tried to protect myself against men, to react against their madness to discern its source; I have listened and I have seen--and I have been afraid of acting for the same motives or for any motive whatever, of believing in the same ghosts or in any other ghost, of letting myself be engulfed by the same intoxications or by some other... afraid, in short, of raving in common and of expiring in a horde of ecstasies.

Each concession we make is accompanied by an inner diminution of which we are not immediately conscious.

If we had the courage to confront the doubts we timidly conceive about ourselves, none of us would utter an 'I' without shame.

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.

Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil.