One who is publicly honest about himself ends up by priding himself somewhat on this honesty: for he knows only too well why he is honest-for the same reasons another person prefers illusion and dissimulation.

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

Only where there are graves are there resurrections.

Over immense periods of time the intellect produced nothing but errors. A few of these proved to be useful and helped to preserve the species: those who hit upon or inherited these had better luck in their struggle for themselves and their progeny. Such erroneous articles of faith... include the following: that there are things, substances, bodies; that a thing is what it appears to be; that our will is free; that what is good for me is also good in itself.

Art depends upon the inexactitude of sight.

Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me.

One is healthy when one can laugh at the earnestness and zeal with which one has been hypnotized by any single detail of one's life.