Nothing sweeter than to drag oneself along behind events; and nothing more reasonable. But without a strong dose of madness, no initiative, no enterprise, no gesture. Reason: the rust of our vitality. It is the...

Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out everyday: Massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a...

Né avec une me habituelle, j’en ai demandé une autre à la musique : ce fut le début de malheurs inespérés.

Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.

True confessions are written with tears only. But my tears would drown the world, as my inner fire would reduce it to ashes.

Croire qu’il lui appartient de dépasser sa condition et de s’orienter vers celle de surhomme, c’est oublier qu’il a du mal à tenir le coup en tant qu’homme, et qu’il n’y parvient qu’à force de...

To live in any true sense of the word is to reject others; to accept them, one must be able to renounce, to do oneself violence, to act against one’s own nature, to weaken oneself;...

Ţi-a făcut cineva rău? Dospeşte ura-n tine, răsuceşte-ţi amarul tainic, frige-ţi vinele clocotitoare. În nopţi, cînd te cuprinde liniştea vastă, nu cădea-n uitarea destructivă a meditaţiei – arde-ţi cu durere şi furie tărăgănarea cărnii, înfige-ţi...

This is how I recognize an authentic poet: by frequenting him, living a long time in the intimacy of his work, something changes in myself, not so much my inclinations or my tastes as my...

Between Ennui and Ecstasy unwinds our whole experience of time.

By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.

Ambition is a drug that turns it’s addicts into potential madmen.

In numele si sub teroarea ei (plictiselii, n.m.) parasesc oamenii caminul si moartea agreabila legata de el si se avanta in lume, spre a muri undeva fara acoperis si fara lacrimi; adolescentii se gandesc la...

Memories vanish when we want to remember, but fix themselves permanently in the mind when we want to forget.

There are people who are destined to taste only the poison in things, for whom any surprise is a painful surprise and any experience a new occasion for torture. if someone were to say to...

I have recommended you the dignity of skepticism: yet here I am, prowling around the Absolute. Technique of contradiction? Remember, rather, what Flaubert said: “I am a mystic and I believe in nothing”.

Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.

Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later, he will regret not having left it intact.

Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection. This is why with Chopin we feel so little like gods.

Tristetea, ca si suferinta, ne revela existenta, deoarece în ele avem în constiinta separatia noastra de lumea obiectiva si nelinistea care da un caracter tragic vietuirii în existenta.Daca ar exista un zeu al tristetii, lui...

Tolerance cannot seduce the young.

The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.

It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: In truth it is itself the quintessence of injustice.

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live –moreover, the only one.

That there should be a reality hidden behind appearances is, after all, quite possible; that language might render such a thing would be an absurd hope.

I believe in the salvation of humanity, in the future of cyanide…

I hate wise men because they are lazy, cowardly, and prudent. To the philosophers’ equanimity, which makes them indifferent to both pleasure and pain, I prefer devouring passions. The sage knows neither the tragedy of...

Femeia-i Paradisul ca noapte.

If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing it.Becoming: an agony without an ending.The older I grow, the less I enjoy performing my little Hamlet....

Só é saudável em nós aquilo pelo que não somos especificamente nós mesmos: são nossas aversões que nos individualizam; nossas tristezas que nos concedem um nome; nossas perdas que nos fazem possuidores de nosso eu....

A zoologist who observed gorillas in their native habitat was amazed by the uniformity of their life and their vast idleness. Hours and hours without doing anything. Was boredom unknown to them? This is indeed...

But where is the antidote for lucid despair, perfectly articulated, proud, and sure? All of us are miserable, but how many know it? The consciousness of misery is too serious a disease to figure in...

No one is responsible for what he is nor even for what he does. This is obvious and everyone more or less agrees that it is so. Then why celebrate or denigrate? Because to exist...

Il ne fait aucun doute pour moi que la sagesse est le but principal de la vie et c’est pourquoi je reviens toujours aux stoïciens. Ils ont atteint la sagesse, on ne peut donc plus...

It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.

Usted puede ser tan pesimista, o en su defecto tan existencialista como quiera. Sin embargo también se ha enamorado. Cómo cualquier idiota.

En un mundo sin melancolía, los ruiseñores se pondrían a eructar.

Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our kind, precisely because they resemble us.

We cannot consent to be judged by someone who has suffered less than ourselves. And since each of us regards himself as an unrecognized Job…

Every phenomenon is a corrupt version of another, largerphenomenon: time, a disease of eternity; history, a disease oftime; life, again, a disease of matter.Then what is normal, what is healthy? Eternity? Which itselfis only an...

Think of God and not religion, of ecstasy and not mysticism. The difference between the theoretician of faith and the believer is as great as between the psychiatrist and the psychotic.

How good would it be if one could die by throwing oneself into an infinite void.

The Real gives me asthma.

In a world without melancholy, nightingales would start burping

To live entirely without a goal! I have glimpsed this state, and have often attained it, without managing to remain there: I am too weak for such happiness.

Sînt oameni cărora le este dat să guste numai otrava din lucruri, pentru care orice surpriză este o surpriză dureroasă și orice experiență un nou prilej de tortură. Dacă se va spune că această suferință...

A book is a suicide postponed.

We rightly scorn those who have no made use of their defects, who have not exploited their deficiencies, and have not been enriched by their losses, as we despise any man who does not suffer...

Word — That invisible dagger.

Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim.