Does our ferocity not derive from the fact that our instincts are all too interested in other people? If we attended more to ourselves and became the center, the object of our murderous inclinations, the sum of our intolerances would diminish.
A book has to dig through the wounds, more, it has cause a new one, a book it has to be dangerous.
It has been a long time since philosophers have read men’s souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we must not be surprised if they no longer matter much to us.
I dream of a language whose words, like fists, would fracture jaws.
Afflicted with existence, each man endures like an animal the consequences which proceed from it. Thus, in a world where everything is detestable, hatred becomes huger than the world and, having transcended its object, cancels itself out.
A garbled quotation is equivalent to a betrayal, an insult, a prejudice.
The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.
No one can enjoy freedom without trembling.
Word – that invisible dagger.
Only superficial minds approach an idea with delicacy.
I would like to explode, flow, crumble into dust, and my disintegration would be my masterpiece.
Doubt works deep within you like a disease or, even more effectively, like a faith.
What music appeals to in us it is difficult to know; what we do know is that music reaches a zone so deep that madness itself cannot penetrate there.
The limit of every pain is an even greater pain.
Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.
What to think of other people? I ask myself this question each time I make a new acquaintance. So strange does it seem to me that we exist, and that we consent to exist.
No position is so false as having understood and still remaining alive.
The need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla.
Humanity adores only those who cause it to perish.
This very second has vanished forever, lost in the anonymous mass of the irrevocable. It will never return. I suffer from this and I do not. Everything is unique – and insignificant.