Sometimes the truth is too simple for intellectuals.
Un homme n’est rien d’autre qu’une se rie d’entreprises. A man is no other than a series of undertakings.
If you want to deserve Hell, you need only stay in bed. The world is iniquity; if you accept it, you are an accomplice, if you change it you are an executioner.
Something begins in order to end: an adventure doesn’t let itself be extended it achieves significance only through its death.
But I must finally realize that I am subject to these sudden transformations. The thing is that I rarely think; a crowd of small metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a veritable revolution takes place.
I am not asking for sensational revelations, but I would like to sense the meaning of that minute, to feel it’s urgency...
Outside nature, against nature, without excuse, beyond remedy, except what remedy I find within myself.
Let it crumble! Let the rocks revile me and flowers wilt at my coming. Your whole universe is not enough to prove me wrong. You are the king of gods, king of stones and stars, king of the waves of the sea. But you are not the king of man.
This then is the age of reason.
Existence is an imperfection.
I am myself and I am here.
Smooth and smiling faces everywhere, but ruin in their eyes.
Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being – like a worm.
It’s just what people do when they’re getting old, when they’re sick of themselves and their life; they think of money and take care of themselves.
The individual’s duty is to do what he wants to do, to think whatever he likes, to be accountable to no one but himself, to challenge every idea and every person.
One could only damage oneself through the harm one did to others. One could never get directly at oneself.
A human being who wakened in the morning with a queesy stomach, with fifteen hours to kill before next bedtime, had not much use for freedom.
I’ve dropped out of their hearts like a little sparrow fallen from its nest. So gather me up, dear, fold me to your heart – and you’ll see how nice I can be.
I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.
Naturally, in the course of my life I have made lots of mistakes, large and small, for one reason or another, but at the heart of it all, every time I made a mistake it was because I was not radical enough.