I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

Life begins on the other side of despair.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.

It is only in our decisions that we are important.

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

Acting is happy agony.

All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.