The most serious parody I have ever heard was this: In the beginning was nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was God.

The most unendurable thing, to be sure, the really terrible thing, would be a life without habits, a life which continually required improvisation.

I love those who do not know how to live, except by going under, for they are those who cross over.

When a nation is on the downward path, when it feels its belief in its own future, its hope of freedom slipping from it, when it begins to see submission as a first necessity and the virtues of submission as measures of self-preservation, then it must overhaul its God.

Everything that is profound loves the mask: the profoundest things have a hatred even of figure and likeness.

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

Thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned.