Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything. Granted, granted I'm a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what's to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is babble--that is, a deliberate pouring from empty into void.

A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.

Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to re-open the wound.

On our earth we can only love withsuffering and through suffering.

Who doesn't desire his fathers death?

Sometimes a man is intensely, even passionately, attached to suffering — that is a fact.

Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.