Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.

Let us not be needlessly bitter: certain failures are sometimes fruitful.

True moral elegance consists in the art of disguising one's victories as defeats.

Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted to it; this world is no less so, since here we regret paradise or anticipate another one. What to do? Where to go? Do nothing and go nowhere, easy enough.

Our first intuitions are the true ones.

The true hero fights and dies in the name of his destiny, and not in the name of a belief.

The Art of Love: knowing how to combine the temperament of a vampire with the discretion of an anemone.