Why does man not see things? He is himself standing in the way: he conceals things.

All parties attempt to represent important things that have developed outside themselves as unimportant, and where they fail in this they assail those things all the more bitterly the more admirable they are.

Many are obstinate with regard to the pathway once they have set upon it, few with regard to the goal.

Many deeds are done so as to forget another deed: there are also opiate activities. I exist so that another will be forgotten.

The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him "better.".

It is not in how one soul approaches another but in how it withdraws that I knowr its affinity and solidarity with the other.

In Russia there is an emigration of intelligence: émigrés cross the frontier in order to read and to write good books. But in doing so they contribute to making their fatherland, abandoned by spirit, into the gaping jaws of Asia that would like to swallow our little Europe.