Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible, then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres.

Leop­ards break in­to the tem­ple and drink all the sac­ri­fi­cial ves­sels dry; it keeps hap­pen­ing; in the end, it can be cal­cu­lat­ed in ad­vance and is in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the rit­ual.

There is a down-and-outness under true knowledge and a childlike happy arising from it.

A picture of my existence... would show a useless wooden stake covered in snow... stuck loosely at a slant in the ground in a ploughed field on the edge of a vast open plain on a dark winter night.

My life was sweeter than other people's and my death will be more terrible by the same degree.

There was once a community of scoundrels, that is to say, they were not scoundrels, but ordinary people.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?