Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us.

Philosophy is a corrective against sadness. Yet there still are people who believe in the profundity of philosophy!

I seem to myself, among civilized men, an intruder, a troglodyte enamored of decrepitude, plunged into subversive prayers.

The mind is the result of the torments the flesh undergoes or inflicts upon itself.

As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals? It’s all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?

The more we try to rest ourselves from our Egos, the deeper we sink into it.

What I know at sixty, I knew as well at twenty. Forty years of a long, superfluous, labor of verification.