Germany collapsed as a result of having engaged in a struggle for empire with the concepts of provincial politics.
A trial cannot be conducted by announcing the general culpability of a civilization. Only the actual deeds which, at least, stank in the nostrils of the entire world were brought to judgment.
The world in which we were called to exist was an absurd world, and there was no other in which we could take refuge.
The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.
Because,' Cormery went on, 'when I was very young, very foolish, and very much alone ... you paid attention to me and, without seeming to, you opened for me the door to everything I love in the world.
I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature to insist on having one
Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence.
The world I live in is loathsome to me, but I feel one with the men who suffer in it
We come into the world laden with the weight of an infinite necessity.
We are rebels for a cause, poets with a dream , and we won't let this world die without a fight.
Great ideas come into the world as gently as doves.
There are people who vindicate the world, who help others live just by their presence.
What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves.
A stranger to myself and to the world, armed solely with a thought that negates itself as soon as it asserts, what is this condition in which I can have peace only by refusing to know and to live, in which the appetite for conquest bumps into walls that defy its assaults?
Nothing in the world is worth turning one's back on what one loves.
But who would dare condemn me in this world with no judges, where no one is innocent!
The world is unimportant and whoever recognizes this conquers his liberty.
But the world itself has no reason, and I can say so, I who have experienced it all, from the creation to the destruction.
False judges are held up in the world's admiration and I alone know the true ones.
To remain a man in today's world, one must have not only unfailing energy and unwavering intensity, one must also have a little luck.
There is nothing abstract about pain. It is specific, it is real, and, when it is intense, it is world destroying.
I have not stopped loving that which is sacred in this world.
History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.
The contradiction is this: man rejects the world as it is, without accepting the necessity of escaping it. In fact, men cling to the world and by far the majority do not want to abandon it.
In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.
In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.
If the world were clear, art would not exist.
I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.
A loveless world is a dead world.
Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.
In the world there is, parallel to the force of death and constraint, an enormous force of persuasion that is called culture.
In a world that has ceased to believe in sin, the artist is responsible for the preaching.
I can feel this heart inside me and I conclude it exists. I can touch this world and I also conclude that it exists. All my knowledge ends at this point. The rest is hypothesis.
What the world requires of the Christians is that they should continue to be Christians.
Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children.
This world, such as it is, is not tolerable. Therefore I need the moon, or happiness, or immortality, I need something which is perhaps demented, but which is not of this world.
I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.
We all carry within us places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and others.
And never have I felt so deeply at one and the same time so detached from myself and so present in the world.