I was always able to understand my friend who decided to quit smoking and who, through an effort of will, succeeded in doing so. One morning, he opened the newspaper, read that the first H- bomb had exploded, found out about the bomb's admirable effects and went straight to the tobacconist's.

The Four Conditions of Happiness: Life in the open air, Love for another being,Freedom from ambition,Creation

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.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

It is immoral not to tell.

...the habit of despair is worse than despair itself.

There is nothing abstract about pain. It is specific, it is real, and, when it is intense, it is world destroying.