“Let everything be remade on simple lines. There is only one people, there is only one people!”

“I believe that around us there is only one word on all sides, one immense word which reveals our solitude and extinguishes our radiance: Nothing! I believe that that word does not point to our insignificance or our unhappiness, but on the contrary to our fulfillment and our divinity, since everything is in ourselves.”

“I detected sarcoma." He put his finger on his neck. "Right here."The other man nodded--his head seemed to be nodding continually--and muttered:"Yes. There's no possibility of operating.""Of course not," said the old specialist, his eyes shining with a kind of sinister irony. "There's only one thing that could remove it--the guillotine.”

“I am more sensitive than other people. Things that other people would not notice awaken a distinct echo in me, and in such moments of lucidity, when I look at myself, I see that I am alone, all alone, all alone.”

“It is not by sin that we attain happiness, nor is it by virtue, nor is it by that kind of divine fire by which one makes great instinctive decisions and which is neither good not evil. It is by none of these things that one reaches happiness. One never reaches happiness.”

“They felt that everything was fleeting, that everything wore out, that everything that was not dead would die, and that even the illusory ties holding them together would not endure. Their sadness did not bring them together. On the contrary, they were separated by all the force of their two sorrows. To suffer together, alas, what disunion!”

“How I waited for you! How I longed for you! he stammered. "I thought of you all the time. I saw you all the time. Your smile was everywhere." He lowered his voice and added, "Sometimes when people were talking commonplaces and your name happened to be mentioned, It would go through my heart like an electric current.”