Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one who kills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years?

It's immoral to steal, but you can take things.

Do silly things. Foolishness is a great deal more vital and healthy than our straining and striving after a meaningful life.

[In] death at least there would be one profit; it would no longer be necessary to eat, to drink, to pay taxes, or to [offend] others; and as a man lies in his grave not one year, but hundreds and thousands of years, the profit was enormous. The life of man was, in short, a loss, and only his death a profit.

What truth? You see where truth is, and where untruth is, but I seem to have lost my sight and see nothing. You boldly settle all important questions, but tell me, dear, isn't it because you're young, because you haven't had time to suffer till you settled a single one of your questions? You boldly look forward, isn't it because you cannot foresee or expect anything terrible, because so far life has been hidden from your young eyes? You are bolder, more honest, deeper than we are, but think only, be just a little magnanimous, and have mercy on me.

The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on; science and art are as well.

The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.