This then is the age of reason.

I felt myself in a solitude so frightful that I contemplated suicide. What held me back was the idea that no one, absolutely no one, would be moved by my death, that I would be even more alone in death than in life.

The coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic.

He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon.

The more absurd life is, the more insupportable death is.

For common minds have an ugly ability to perceive in the deepest and richest saying nothing but their own everyday opinion.

That’s what existence means: draining one’s own self dry without the sense of thirst.