“The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.”

I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.

Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.

I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.

When reason fails, the devil helps!

People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

I think the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

You can be sincere and still be stupid.

Besides, nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.