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