The best revenge you can have on intellectuals is to be madly happy.

The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation.

At any streetcorner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face. As it is, in its distressing nudity, in its light without effulgence, it is elusive.

Somebody has to have the last word. If not, every argument could be opposed by another and we d never be done with it.

After all, perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent.

I know with certainty that a man's work is nothing but the long journey to recover, through the detours of art, the two or three simple and great images which first gained access to his heart.

We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.

A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.