Whether or not there exists a solution to problems troubles only a minority; that the emotions have no outcome, lead to nothing, vanish into themselves - that is the great unconscious drama, the affective insolubility everyone suffers without even thinking about it.

Not content with real sufferings, the anxious man imposes imaginary ones on himself; he is a being for whom unreality exists, must exist; otherwise where would he obtain the ration of torment his nature demands?

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.

"I am like a broken puppet whose eyes have fallen inside." This remark of a mental patient weighs more heavily than a whole stack of works on introspection.