By interpreting freedom as the propagation and immediate gratification of needs, people distort their own nature, for they engender in themselves a multitude of pointless and foolish desires, habits, and incongruous stratagems. Their lives are motivated only by mutual envy, sensuality, and ostentation.

Every ant knows the formula of its ant-hill, every bee knows the formula of its beehive. They know it in their own way, not in our way. Only humankind does not know its own formula.

Everything seems stupid when it fails.

In summer, intolerable closeness; in winter, unendurable cold. All the floors were rotten. Filth on the floors an inch thick; one could slip and fall.

you don't need free will to determine that twice two is four. that's not what i call free will

I've made a terrible confession to you, he concluded gloomily. Do appreciate it, gentlemen. And it's not enough, not enough to appreciate it, you must not just appreciate it, it should also be precious to you, and if not, if this, too, goes past your souls, then it means you really do not respect me, gentlemen. I tell you that, and I will die of shame at having confessed to such men as you.

I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.