The only really committed artist is he who, without refusing to take part in the combat, at least refuses to join the regular armies and remains a freelance.
Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world.
An intense feeling carries with it its own universe, magnificent or wretched as the case may be.
Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood - never.
In the world there is, parallel to the force of death and constraint, an enormous force of persuasion that is called culture.
No matter how the sun shone, the sea held forth no more promises.
Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.
For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
What would become of the world if the condemned started to confide their heartaches to the executioners?
To be born to create, to love, to win at games is to be born to live in time of peace. But war teaches us to lose everything and become what we were not. It all becomes a question of style.
Truth and freedom, having few lovers, are demanding mistresses.
... one cannot be happy in exile or in oblivion. One cannot always be a stranger. I want to return to my homeland, make all my loved ones happy. I see no further than this.
When one has no character, one HAS to apply a method. Here it did wonders incontrovertibly, and I am living on the site of one of the greatest crimes in human history.
The slave and those whose present life is miserable and who can find no consolation in the heavens are assured that at least the future belongs to them. The future is the only kind of property that the masters willingly concede to the slaves.
I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.
Truth is not a virtue, but a passion. It is never charitable.
With rebellion, awareness is born
Travel, which is like a greater and a graver science, brings us back to ourselves.
The laws of nature may be operative up to a certain limit, beyond which they turn against themselves to give birth to the absurd.
...we rarely confide in those who are better than we. Rather, we are more inclined to flee their society. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don't want to improve ourselves and be bettered, for we should first have to be judged in default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. In short, we should like, at the same time, to cease being guilty and yet not to make the effort of cleansing ourselves.
True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself, hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person.
Sometimes, from beyond the skycrapers, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island.
None of the evils which totalitarianism ... claims to remedy is worse than totalitarianism itself.
... unhappiness is like marriage. We believe we chose it, but then it is choosing us. That is how it is, we can do nothing about it.
In a world that has ceased to believe in sin, the artist is responsible for the preaching.
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