More and more, when faced with the world of men, the only reaction is one of individualism. Man alone is an end unto himself. Everything one tries to do for the common good ends in failure.

More from Notebooks 1935-1942 (1962), March 1940 entry

• Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.
• A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.
• A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them.
• But perhaps the great work of art has less importance in itself than in the ordeal it demands of a man and the opportunity it provides him of overcoming his phantoms and approaching a little closer to his naked reality.
• Don’t walk in front of me because I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me because I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
• For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.