One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland – and no other.
Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil.
Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when belief withers.
We are born to Exist, not to know, to be, not to assert ourselves.
We derive our vitality from our store of madness.
We interest others by the misfortune we spread around us.
To live entirely without a goal! I have glimpsed this state, and have often attained it, without managing to remain there: I am too weak for such happiness.
Only those moments count, when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you’d prefer to blow your brains out than exchange a word with someone.
Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our kind, precisely because they resemble us.
A civilization begins to decline the moment Life becomes its sole obsession.
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.
Woes and wonders of Power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea.
When we cannot be delivered from ourselves, we delight in devouring ourselves.
We die in proportion to the words we fling around us.
In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.
Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven’t been cut off.
Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.
A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself.
I have no nationality – the best possible status for an intellectual.
Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.