“Indeed, the direction of the future is only there in order to elude us.”

“Only literature could reveal the process of breaking the law - without which the law would have no end - independently of the necessity to create order.”

“Each of us is incomplete compared to someone else - an animal's incomplete compared to a person... and a person compared to God, who is complete only to be imaginary.”

“I think that knowledge enslaves us, that at the base of all knowledge there is a servility, the acceptation of a way of life wherein each moment has meaning only in relation to another or others that will follow it.”

“Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaining it.”

“Human life, distinct from juridical existence, existing as it does on aglobe isolated in celestial space, from night to day and from one countryto another—human life cannot in any way be limited to the closedsystems assigned to it by reasonable conceptions. The immense travailof recklessness, discharge, and upheaval that constitutes life could beexpressed by stating that life starts with the deficit of these systems;at least what it allows in the way of order and reserve has meaningonly from the moment when the ordered and reserved forces liberateand lose themselves for ends that cannot be subordinated to any thingone can account for. It is only by such insubordination—even if it isimpoverished—that the human race ceases to be isolated in the unconditionalsplendor of material things.”

“Nothing is more necessary or stronger in us than rebellion.”