Isn’t it obvious that a person would leave from where he is hated so much? The heroism of staying in such a place is that of a roach which won’t be exterminated from the bathroom.

This inescapable duty to observe oneself: if someone else is observing me, naturally I have to observe myself too if none observe me, I have to observe myself all the closer

Isn't it only natural to leave a place where one is so bitterly hated?...The heroism involved in staying put in spite of it all is the heroism of a cockroach, which also won't be driven out of the bathroom

Evil is whatever distracts

I do not read advertisements - I would spend all my time wanting things

One must not cheat anybody, not even the world of one's triumph

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

...the books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of a person we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation--a book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us

Books are a narcotic

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing