Alas," said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into." "You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.

The whole visible world is perhaps nothing more than the rationalization of a man who wants to find peace for a moment.

The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.

The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. Only after death, only in solitude, does a man’s true nature emerge. In death, as on the chimney sweep’s Saturday night, the soot gets washed from his body.

Going to pieces. To go to pieces so pointlessly and unnecessarily.

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?

It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.