I don’t understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn’t it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?

The universal view melts things into a blur.

Maniacs of Procreation, bipeds with devalued faces, we have lost all appeal for each other.

If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing.

If a man has not, by the time he is thirty, yielded to the fascination of every form of extremism—I don't know whether he is to be admired or scorned, regarded as a saint or a corpse.

We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly.

Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it.