One hardly saves a world without ruling it.

What to think of other people? I ask myself this question each time I make a new acquaintance. So strange does it seem to me that we exist, and that we consent to exist.

Self-conscious rejection of the absolute is the best way to resist God; thus illusion, the substance of life, is saved.

As art sinks into paralysis, artists multiply. This anomaly ceases to be one if we realize that art, on its way to exhaustion, has become both impossible and easy.

To accomplish nothing and die of the strain

There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be.

When every man has realized that his birth is a defeat, existence, endurable at last, will seem like the day after a surrender, like the relief and the repose of the conquered.