“I feel safer with a Pyrrho than with a Saint Paul, for a jesting wisdom is gentler than an unbridled sanctity.”

“Nothing sweeter than to drag oneself along behind events; and nothing more reasonable. But without a strong dose of madness, no initiative, no enterprise, no gesture. Reason: the rust of our vitality. It is the madman in us who forces us to adventure; once he abandons us, we are lost; everything depends on him, even our vegetative life; it is he who invites us, who obliges us to breathe, and it is also he who forces our blood to venture through our veins. Once he withdraws, we are alone indeed! We cannot be normal and alive at the same time.”

“La noia è pensiero in germe”

“An existence transfigured by failure.”

“We are ourselves only by the sum of our failures.”

“And who was ever bold enough to do nothing because every action is senseless in infinity?”

“Nature's great mistake was to have been unable to confine herself to one "kingdom": juxtaposed with the vegetable, everything else seems inopportune, out of place. The sun should have sulked at the appearance of the first insect, and gone out altogether with the advent of the chimpanzee.”