Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion.

She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep.

Snicker on hearing his name: 'the gentleman who thinks we are descended from the apes.'

Mediocrity cherishes rules; as for me, I hate them; I feel for them and for every restriction, corporation, caste, hierarchy, level, herd, a loathing which fills my soul, and it is in this respect perhaps that I understand martyrdom.

One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.

But the most wretched thing, is it not-is to drag out, as I do, a useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to someone, we should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice.

The rage for wanting to conclude is one of the most deadly and most fruitless manias to befall humanity. Each religion and each philosophy has pretended to have God to itself, to measure the infinite, and to know the recipe for happiness. What arrogance and what nonsense! I see, to the contrary, that the greatest geniuses and the greatest works have never concluded.