Ideas come in pairs and they contradict one another; their opposition is the principal engine of reflection.

Once liberty has exploded in the soul of a man, the gods can do nothing against that man.

As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.

Absurd, irreducible; nothing--not even a profound and secret delirium of nature--could explain [a tree root].

The public, too, has to make an effort in order to understand the writer who, though he renounce complacent obscurity, cannot always express his new-hidden thoughts lucidly and according to accepted models.

Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of form a distance; it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast - or else there is nothing at all.

What is boredom? It is when there is simultaneously too much and not enough.