Tolerance - the function of an extinguished ardor - tolerance cannot seduce the young.

So long as man is protected by madness - he functions - and flourishes.

Glory - once achieved, what is it worth?

A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.

By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.

Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, Chaos is being yourself.

Our works, whatever they may be, derive from our incapacity to kill or to kill ourselves.

Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness.

No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.

A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions.

Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment.

What surrounds us we endure better for giving it a name - and moving on.

In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary.

It is because we are all imposters that we endure each other.

Life inspires more dread than death - it is life which is the great unknown.

You are done for - a living dead man - not when you stop loving but stop hating. Hatred preserves: in it, in its chemistry, resides the mystery of life.

Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us.

Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.

Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty.

The task of the solitary man is to be even more solitary.

To act is to anchor in an imminent future, so imminent it becomes almost tangible; to act is to feel you are consubstantial with that future.

Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in.

Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls.

Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.

Each concession we make is accompanied by an inner diminution of which we are not immediately conscious.

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.

One hardly saves a world without ruling it.

Nothing proves that we are more than nothing.

Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.

A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself.

The limit of every pain is an even greater pain.

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.

Under each formula lies a corpse.

The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.

In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.

Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.

No one can enjoy freedom without trembling.

We define only out of despair, we must have a formula... to give a facade tot he void.

Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?

To venture upon an undertaking of any kind, even the most insignificant, is to sacrifice to envy.

Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it.

Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas.

A distant enemy is always preferable to one at the gate.

I foresee the day when we shall read nothing but telegrams and prayers.

For you who no longer posses it, freedom is everything, for us who do, it is merely an illusion.

I have no nationality - the best possible status for an intellectual.

A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.