I will tell you another thing that would be better, and that is, if I myself believe even an iota of what I have just written. I swear to you, gentlemen, that I do not really believe one thing, not ev...
I was laughed at by everyone upon every occasion. But no one knew or guessed that if there was a man on this earth who knew better than anyone how ridiculous I was, that man was myself, and that was t...
I wanted to fathom her secrets; I wanted her to come to me and say: I love you, and if not that, if that was senseless insanity, then...well, what was there to care about? Did I know what I wanted? I...
I want to be there when every one suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built by this longing, and I am a believer.
I want to attempt a thing like that and am frightened by these trifles, he thought, with an odd smile. Hm … yes, all is in a man's hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that's an axiom. It wou...
I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: 'Thou art jus...
I suffered all evening, all night, I'm partly suffering now as well.
I seem to be ready for work, my materials are collected, yet the work doesn't get done! Nothing is done!
I regard you as one of those men who would stand and smile at their torturer while he cuts their entrails out, if only they have found faith or God. Find it and you will live. You have long needed a c...
I really feel obliged to go to this confounded luncheon.
I quite understand you. You mean that an innocent lie for the sake of a good joke is harmless, and does not offend the human heart. Some people lie, if you like to put it so, out of pure friendship, i...
I once saw a convict who had been twenty years in prison and was being released take leave of his fellow prisoners. There were men who remembered his first coming into prison, when he was young, carel...
I maintain that he is in his right mind, and that if he had not been, he would have behaved more cleverly.
I like revisiting, at certain times, spots where I was once happy; I like to shape the present in the image of the irretrievable past.
I have felt ashamed all the time I've been writing this story; so it's hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through moral...
I got entangled in my own data, and my conclusion directly contradicts the original idea from which I start. Starting from unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism. I will add, however,...
I experienced, moreover, one form of suffering which is perhaps the sharpest, the most painful that can be experienced in a house of detention cut off from law and liberty. I mean forced association....
I don’t understand anything...and I no longer want to understand anything. I want to stick to the fact...If I wanted to understand something, I would immediately have to betray the fact, but I’ve made...
I don’t know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.
I do not wish to believe and I cannot believe that evil is the normal state of humanity.