To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.

And yet I am convinced that man will never give up true suffering- that is, destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole root of consciousness.

What terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people.

It's in despair that you find the sharpest pleasures, particularly when you are most acutely aware of the hopelessness of your position.

Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously.

What can become of him if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying the innumerable desires he has created for himself? He is isolated, and what concern has he with the rest of humanity? They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.

...one may say anything about the history of the world - anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one can't say is that it's rational.