Freedom is not choosing; that is merely the move that we make when all is already lost. Freedom is knowing and understanding and respecting things quite other than ourselves.

Probably no adult misery can be compared with a child's despair.

When does one ever know a human being? Perhaps only after one has realized the impossibility of knowledge and renounced the desire for it and finally ceased to feel even the need of it. But then what one achieves is no longer knowledge, it is simply a kind of co-existence; and this too is one of the guises of love.

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

I think philosophy is extremely good training for anyone who wants to do anything. Although that is an idea which people may speak scornfully of now, I think it does teach one to

Moralistic is not moral. And as for truth - well, it's like brown - it's not in the spectrum. Truth is so generic.

Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.