487 quotes
Fear is the antidote to boredom: the remedy must be stronger than the disease.
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
For a writer, to change languages is to write a love letter with a dictionary.
Anathemas and Admirations (1987)
Nothing deserves to be undone, doubtless because nothing deserved to be done.
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: in truth, it is itself the quintessence of injustice.
History and Utopia (1960)
Woes and wonders of power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea.
History and Utopia (1960)
There is no one whose death I have not longed for, at one moment or another.
Drawn and Quartered (1983)
Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires.
History and Utopia (1960)
If death had only negative aspects, dying would be an unmanageable action.
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.
All Gall Is Divided (1952)
Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.
A Short History of Decay (1949)
At different degrees, everything is pathology, except for indifference.
A Short History of Decay (1949)
What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you — what a revelation.
History and Utopia (1960)
To Live signifies to believe and hope — to lie and to lie to oneself.
A Short History of Decay (1949)
To devastate by language, to blow up the word and with it the world.
History and Utopia (1960)
The refutation of suicide: is it not inelegant to abandon a world which has so willingly put itself at the service of our melancholy?
All Gall Is Divided (1952)
Even more than in a poem, it is the aphorism that the word is god.
Drawn and Quartered (1983)
To suffer is the great modality of taking the world seriously.
The Book of Delusions (1936)
Vague a l'ame — melancholy yearning for the end of the world.
A Short History of Decay (1949)
It is the stroke of midnight. I feel lonely in the face of despair stronger than me. And again I take refuge in the time before I was born.
Time is heavy sometimes; imagine how heavy eternity must be.
The Book of Delusions (1936)