No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are recruited from the martyrs not quite beheaded. Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.

We cannot be normal and alive at the same time.

My enthusiasms...constitute my reserves, my unexploited resources, perhaps my future.

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.

Basis of society: anonymous sweat.

I have all the defects of other people yet everything they do seems to me inconceivable.

Only those moments count, when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you'd prefer to blow your brains out than exchange a word with someone.