The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.

In his state of complete powerlessness the individual perceives the time he has left to live as a brief reprieve.

The good man is he who rules himself as he does his own property: his autonomous being is modelled on material power.

There is no love that is not an echo.

The idea that after this war life will continue 'normally' or even that culture might be 'rebuilt' - as if the rebuilding of culture were not already its negation - is idiotic.

The capacity for fear and for happiness are the same, the unrestricted openness to experience amounting to self-abandonment in which the vanquished rediscovers himself.

He who matures early lives in anticipation.