Nobody is bound by any obligation unless it has first been freely accepted.
The spontaneity of slaps is sincerity, whereas the ceremonial of caresses is largely convention.
Is not man himself the most unsettled of all the creatures of the earth? What is this trembling sensation that is intensified with each ascending step in the natural order?
A long association-prolonged human contact, when a man and woman live together-this ends up producing a sort of rot, a poison.
A vague uneasiness: the police. It’s like when you suddenly understand you have to undress in front of the doctor.
Justice! Custodian of the world! But since the world errs, justice must be custodian of the world’s errors.
We play make believe, pretend to take ourselves and each other seriously – to love each other, hate each other – but then – it isn’t true. It isn’t true, we don’t care at all!
Memories are like stones, time and distance erode them like acid.
Behind everything we feel, there is always a sense of fear.
Nature is honest, we aren’t; we embalm our dead.
Every tiny part of us cries out against the idea of dying, and hopes to live forever.
Each of us is the only person who can give the other what each of us wants to have: Peace.
Sisterly love is, of all sentiments, the most abstract. Nature does not grant it any functions.
Thought itself needs words. It runs on them like a long wire. And if it loses the habit of words, little by little it becomes shapeless, somber.
We cannot bear to regard ourselves simply as playthings of blind chance, we cannot admit to feeling ourselves abandoned.
The first temptation, upon meeting an old friend after many years, is always to – look the other way.
I think the family is the place where the most ridiculous and least respectable things in the world go on.
This free will business is a bit terrifying anyway. It’s almost pleasanter to obey, and make the most of it.
Murderers, in general, are people who are consistent, people who are obsessed with one idea and nothing else.
We know well enough when we’re being unjust and despicable. but we don’t restrain ourselves because we experience a certain pleasure, a primitive sort of satisfaction in moments like that.