Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.

The more intense a spiritual leader’s appetite for power, the more he is concerned to limit it to others.

Truths begin by a conflict with the police- and end by calling them in.

In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary.

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

You are done for – a living dead man – not when you stop loving but stop hating. Hatred preserves: in it, in its chemistry, resides the “”mystery”” of life.

What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.

Isn’t history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?

A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself.

Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty.

Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.

Knowledge, having irritated and stimulated our appetite for power, will lead us inexorably to our ruin.

I’m simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?

Man is unacceptable.

The mind is the result of the torments the flesh undergoes or inflicts upon itself.

Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them.

What we crave, what we want to see in others eyes, is that servile expression, an unconcealed infatuation with our gestures.

To Live signifies to believe and hope – to lie and to lie to oneself.

Under each formula lies a corpse.

If our fellow men could be aware of our opinions about them, love, friendship, and devotion would be forever erased from the dictionaries; and if we had the courage to confront the doubts we timidly...

A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation’s paradise and it’s tomb.

Reality is a creation of our excesses.

Not to be obliged, like so many others, to choose between the insipid and the atrocious.