487 quotes
The poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
He who has never envied the vegetable has missed the human drama.
The Fall Into Time (1964)
Love, a tacit agreement between two unhappy parties to overestimate each other.
The Fall Into Time (1964)
There is only this swarm of dying creatures stricken with longevity, all the more hateful in that they are so good at organizing their agony.
The Fall Into Time (1964)
It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Our place is somewhere between being and nonbeing — between two fictions.
Anathemas and Admirations (1987)
Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and which has not ended badly.
A Short History of Decay (1949)
What sin have you committed to be born, what crime to exist?
Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?
History and Utopia (1960)
A serious, honest mind understands—and can understand—nothing of history. History in return is marvelously suited to delight an erudite cynic.
We are fulfilled only when we aspire to nothing, when we are impregnated by that nothing to the point of intoxication.
On the Heights of Despair (1934)
I do not struggle against the world, I struggle against a greater force, against my weariness of the world.
Drawn and Quartered (1979)
Once again, I want to pray, cry. dissolve, be nothing, return to the initial zero from before birth.
Everything that is engenders, sooner or later, nightmares. Let us try, therefore, to invent something better than being.
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?
Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an impostor.
A Short History of Decay (1949)
When every man has realized that his birth is a defeat, existence, endurable at last, will seem like the day after a surrender, like the relief and the repose of the conquered.
What every man who loves his country hopes for in his inmost heart: the suppression of half his compatriots.
History and Utopia (1960)
The farther men get from God, the farther they advance into the knowledge of religions.
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation.
Anathemas and Admirations (1987)