Man is a creative animal, doomed to strive toward a goal, engaged in full-time engineering.

Sorrow compressed my heart, and I felt I would die, and then... Well, then I woke up.

Therefore, in my incontrovertible capacity as plaintiff and defendant judge and accused, I condemn this nature, which has so brazenly and unceremoniously inflicted this suffering... since I am unable to destroy Nature, I am destroying myself, solely out of weariness of having to endure a tyranny in which there is no guilty party.

At that point I ought to have gone away, but a strange sensation rose up in me, a sort of defiance of fate, a desire to challenge it, to put out my tongue at it. I laid down the largest stake allowe-four thousand gulden-and lost it. Then, getting hot, I pulled out all I had left, staked it on the same number, and lost again, after which I walked away from the table as though I were stunned. I could not even grasp what had happened to me.

I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.

Only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.