I’ve done everything I wanted to do, writing books, learning about things, but I’ve been swindled all the same because it’s never anything more.

I was still keenly aware as in my childhood of the inexplicable nature of my presence here on earth; where had I come from here; where was I going? I often thought about these things with a kind of stupefied horror and used to fill my diary with long self-communings

Le nihiliste a raison de penser que le monde no possède aucune justification et que lui-même n'est rien; mais il oublie qu'il lui appartient de justifier le monde et de se faire exister valablement.

The goal toward which I surpass myself must appear to me as a point of departure toward a new act of surpassing.

Have you ever felt in your inmost being, the conscience of others?' again she was trembling, the words were not releasing her. 'It's intolerable you know

As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.

N'importe quoi pouvait donc m'arriver, comme à n'importe qui : quelle révolution! C'est tellement étonnant d'être soi, justement soi, c'est si radicalement unique, qu'on a peine à se persuader que cette singularité se rencontre chez tout le monde et qu'on relève des statistiques. Maladie, accident, malheur, ça n'arrive jamais qu'aux autres : mais sous les yeux des curieux, l'autre brusquement, c'était moi; comme tous les autres, j'étais pour tous les autres une autre.

It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity no to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.

All she had to do was make the simplest of gestures - open her hands and let go her hold. She lifted one hand and moved the fingers of it; they responded, in surprise and obedience, and this obedience of a thousand little unsuspected muscles was in itself a miracle. Why ask for more?