Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts.

Where unclarity resides, there is temptation, and there it proves only too easily the stronger. Wherever there is ambiguity, wherever there is wavering, there is disobedience down at the bottom.

The reign of the tyrant ends with his death, and the reign of the martyr starts with it.

The great trick with a woman is to get rid of her while she think's she's rid of you.

With the daguerreotype, everyone will be able to have their portrait taken . . . and at the same time everything is being done to make us all look exactly the same.

One could construe the life of man as a great discourse in which the various people represent different parts of speech (the same might apply to states).

And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.