Thinking should be like musical meditation. Has any philosopher pursued a thought to its limits the way Bach or Beethoven develop and exhaust a musical theme? Even after having read the most profound thinkers, one still feels the need to begin anew. Only music gives definitive answers.

Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.

In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.

The literary man? An indiscreet man, who devaluates his miseries, divulges them, tells them like so many beads: immodesty-the sideshow of second thoughts-is his rule; he offers himself.

True confessions are written with tears only. But my tears would drown the world, as my inner fire would reduce it to ashes.

We die in proportion to the words we fling around us.

No matter which way we go, it is no better than any other. It is all the same whether you achieve something or not, have faith or not, just as it is all the same whether you cry or remain silent.