“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.”

The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.

The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.

I know simply that the sky will last longer than I.

What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.

Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.

We have to live and let live in order to create what we are.

Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed underneath a sky dripping with stars. I was alive then.

I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.

If absolute truth belongs to anyone in this world, it certainly does not belong to the man or party that claims to possess it.

We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself.

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.

A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says.

A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says.

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.

Live to the point of tears.

Perhaps my dynamite plants will put an end to war sooner than your [pacifist] congresses. On the day two army corps can annihilate each other in one second all civilized nations will recoil from war in horror.

A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying.

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

After I was discharged from the military, it was difficult trying to become a civilian.

Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old.

The things I believed in dont exist any more. It’s foolish to pretend that they do. Western Civilization finally went up in smoke in the chimneys at Dachau but I was too infatuated to see it. I see it now.

Civilization never recedes; the law of necessity ever forces it onwards.

Even in the best and most peacefully civilized countries many occasions arise when a woman versed in the knowledge and use of fire arms may find that information and skill of great importance.