“If we could truly see ourselves the way others see us we'd disappear on the spot.”

“It has been a long time since philosophers have read men’s souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we must not be surprised if they no longer matter much to us.”

“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.”

“If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.”

“I have tried to protect myself against men, to react against their madness to discern its source; I have listened and I have seen--and I have been afraid of acting for the same motives or for any motive whatever, of believing in the same ghosts or in any other ghost, of letting myself be engulfed by the same intoxications or by some other... afraid, in short, of raving in common and of expiring in a horde of ecstasies.”

“We rightly scorn those who have no made use of their defects, who have not exploited their deficiencies, and have not been enriched by their losses, as we despise any man who does not suffer at being a man or simply at being. Hence no graver insult can be inflicted than to call someone 'happy', no greater flattery than to grant him a 'vein of melancholy'... This is because gaiety is linked to no important action and because, except for the mad, no one laughs when he is alone.”

“Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.”