Fear can supplant our real problems only to the extent -unwilling either to assimilate or to exhaust it -we perpetuate it within ourselves like a temptation and enthrone it at the very heart of our solitude.

No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are recruited from the martyrs not quite beheaded. Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.

What is pity but the vice of kindness.

If each of us were to confess his most secret desire, the one that inspires all his plans, all his actions, he would say: "I want to be praised."

When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances, you no longer need to be saved, you are saved, and miserable forever.

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.

I never met one interesting mind that was not richly endowed with inadmissible deficiencies.

Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.

We are all deep in a hell each moment of which is a miracle.

Reality is a creation of our excesses.