It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

Genius is what a man invents when he is looking for a way out.

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

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.

The painful secret of gods and kings is that men are free, Aegistheus. You know it and they do not.

A kiss without a moustache, they said then, is like an egg without salt; I will add to it: and it is like Good without Evil.

I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.