Self-knowledge - the bitterest knowledge of all and also the kind we cultivate least: what is the use of catching ourselves out, morning to night, in the act of illusion, pitilessly tracing each act back to its root, and losing case after case before our own tribunal?

The more you are a victim of contradictory impulses, the less you know which to yield to. To lack character - precisely that and nothing more.

We have lost, being born, as much as we shall lose, dying. Everything.

When I happen to be busy, I never give a moment's thought to the "meaning" of anything, particularly of whatever it is I am doing. A proof that the secret of everything is in action and not abstention, that fatal cause of consciousness.

Two enemies - the same man divided.

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.

We dread the future only when we are not sure we can kill ourselves when we want to.

There is nothing to say about anything. So there can be no limit to the number of books.

Fear is the antidote to boredom: the remedy must be stronger than the disease.

Self-pity is not as sterile as we suppose. Once we feel its mere onset, we assume a thinker's attitude, and come to think of it, we come to think!