A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself.
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What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us his?
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What surrounds us we endure better for giving it a name - and moving on.
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Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us.
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Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.
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Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in.
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In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.
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The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.
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Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.
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Everything is pathology, except for indifference.
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The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth.
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A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.
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Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.
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Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.
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Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.
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Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, Chaos is being yourself.
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Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an imposter.
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A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.
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A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.
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Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires.
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A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions.
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The more we try to rest ourselves from our Egos, the deeper we sink into it.
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Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls.
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We inhabit a language rather than a country.
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Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness.
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Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.
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The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.
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Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen.
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Sperm is a bandit in its pure state.
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The Universal view melts things into a blur.
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