However much we may feel for the misery of someone close to us, we always act with some artificiality in their presence. We hold-back from telling them everything we think, often because we do not genuinely mean what we say; or because we take a pleasure in their plight, thankful that we are not affected.

People who wish to numb our caution in dealing with them by means of flattery are employing a dangerous expedient, like a sleeping draught, which, if it does not put us to sleep, keeps us all the more awake.

It is a terrible thought, to contemplate that an immense number of mediocre thinkers are occupied with really influential matters.

Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed!

Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in "another" or "better" life.

In every age the wisest have passed the identical judgment on life: it is worthless.

One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.