Real nobility is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.
When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.
Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.
To know oneself, one should assert oneself.
As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.
We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.
You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.
A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.
Without freedom, no art art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.
To abandon oneself to principles is really to die - and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.
There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.
A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.
The society based on production is only productive, not creative.
Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.
The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.
Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well.
It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all.
Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.
In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
Blessed are the hearts that can bend they shall never be broken.
Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.
Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.
Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.
Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.
Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.
There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.
To be famous, in fact, one has only to kill one's landlady.
We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.
The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.
We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves.
Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.
It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible.
I know of only one duty, and that is to love.
Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.
Don't walk behind me I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.
How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.
He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.
It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.