In the torments of the intellect, there is a certain bearing which is to be sought in vain among those of the heart. Skepticism is the elegance of anxiety.

Objection to scientific knowledge: this world doesn't deserve to be known.

The advantage of meditating upon life and death is being able to say anything at all about them.

Death poses a problem which replaces all the others. What is deadly to philosophy, to the naive belief in the hierarchy of perplexities.

Lucidity's task: to attain a correct despair, an Olympian ferocity.

There is an innate anxiety which supplants in us both knowledge and intuition.

Incredible that the prospect of having a biographer has made no one renounce having a life.

The pessimist has to invent new reasons to exist every day: he is a victim of the "meaning" of life.

The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.

If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is certainly God.