Quote collection
464 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"She smiled and said with an ecstatic air: "It shines like a little diamond", "What does?" "This moment. It is round, it hangs in empty space like a little diamond; I am eternal."
"So it comes to this; one doesn’t need rest. Why bother about sleep if one isn’t sleepy? That stands to reason, doesn’t it? Wait a minute, there’s a snag somewhere; something disagreeable. Why, now, should it be disagreeable? …Ah, I see; it’s life without a break."
"I must be without remorse or regrets as I am without excuse; for from the instant of my upsurge into being, I carry the weight of the world by myself alone without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant."
"Night is falling: at dusk, you must have good eyesight to be able to tell the Good Lord from the Devil."
"A pale reflection of myself wavers in my consciousness...and suddenly the “I” pales, pales, and fades out."
"For common minds have an ugly ability to perceive in the deepest and richest saying nothing but their own everyday opinion."
"This then is the age of reason."
"I know. I know that I shall never again meet anything or anybody who will inspire me with passion. You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it. I know I'll never jump again."
"Either the USSR was not the country of socialism, in which case socialism didn't exist anywhere and doubtless, wasn't possible: or else, socialism was that, this abominable monster, this police state, the power of beasts of prey."
"Everything comes to us from others. To Be is to belong to someone."
"Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the of it is nothing other than the sense you choose."
"A madman's ravings are absurd in relation to the situation in which he finds himself, but not in relation to his madness."
"Man is condemned to be free"
"There is no salvation anywhere. The idea of salvation implies the idea of an absolute."
"I committed the first crime by creating men as mortals. After that, what more could you do, you the murderers? Come on; they already had death in them: at most you simply hastened things a little."
"Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse."
"I had realized in the meantime that action too has its difficulties, and that one can also be led to it by neurosis. We are not saved by politics any more than by literature."
"It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish."
"It is no longer possible to escape men. Farewell to the monsters, farewell to the saints. Farewell to pride. All that is left is men."
"A Soviet citizen, an official writer, once said to me: "The day when Communism (that is, well-being for everyone) reigns, man's tragedy will begin: his finitude.""