The vanity of existence is revealed in the whole form existence assumes: in the infiniteness of time and space contrasted with the finiteness of the individual in both; in the fleeting present as the sole form in which actuality exists; in the contingency and relativity of all things; in continual becoming without being; in continual desire without satisfaction; in the continual frustration of striving of which life consists. . . Time is that by virtue of which everything becomes nothingness in our hands and loses all real value.

Unrest is the mark of existence.

Motives are causes experienced from within.

The inexpressible depth of music, so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain… Music expresses only the quintessence of life and its events, never these themselves.

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

I constantly saw the false and the bad, and finally the absurd and the senseless, standing in universal admiration and honour.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.