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

It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.

We seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack. Therefore, rather than grateful, we are bitter.

For whence did Dante take the materials for his hell but from this our actual world? And yet he made a very proper hell of it.

Every generation, no matter how paltry its character, thinks itself much wiser than the one immediately preceding it, let alone those that are more remote.

Life is a language in which certain truths are conveyed to us; if we could learn them in some other way, we should not live.

Ist es an und fu? r sich absurd, das Nichtsein fu? r einUbel zu ? halten; da jedes Ubel wie jedes Gut das Dasein zur Voraussetzung hat, ja sogar das Bewusstsein. It is in and by itself absurd to regard non-existence as an evil; for every evil, like every good, presupposes existence, indeed even consciousness.