Our life is a loan received from death with sleep as the daily interest on this loan.

The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

There are two things which make it impossible to believe that this world is the successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and at the same time, all-powerful being; firstly, the misery which abounds in it everywhere; and secondly, the obvious imperfection of its highest product, man, who is a burlesque of what he should be.

When you look back on your life, it looks as though it were a plot, but when you are into it, it's a mess: just one surprise after another. Then, later, you see it was perfect.

Life is full of troubles and vexations, that one must either rise above it by means of corrected thoughts, or leave it.

The man who goes up in a balloon does not feel as if he were ascending; he only sees the earth sinking deeper below him.