“Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later, he will regret not having left it intact.”

“But man is a strayed animal, and when he falls victim to doubt, if he should happen to take no further pleasure in attacking others, he turns on himself in order to inflict merciless tortures.”

“The man too lucid to worship will also be too lucid to wreck, or will wreck only his … rebellions; for what is the use of rebelling only to discover, afterwards, a universe intact? A paltry monologue.”

“Though we may prefer ourselves to the universe, we nonetheless loathe ourselves much more than we suspect. If the wise man is so rare a phenomenon, it is because he seems unshaken by the aversion which, like all beings, he must feel for himself.”

“Once man loses his faculty of indifference he becomes a potential murderer; once he transforms his idea into a god the consequences are incalculable. We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits: the excesses provoked by the goddess Reason, by the concept of nation, class, or race are akin to those of the Inquisition or of the Reformation”

“During the long nights in the caves, how many Hamlets must have murmured their endless monologues—for it is likely that the apogee of metaphysical torment is to be located well before that universal insipidity which followed the advent of Philosophy.”

“The more power man acquires, the more vulnerable he becomes. What he must fear most is the moment when, creation entirely fleeced, he will celebrate his triumph, that fatal apotheosis, the victory he will not survive.”