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.

Until you have become really, in actual fact, as brother to everyone, brotherhood will not come to pass.

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

Above all, don't lie to yourself.

The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was 'sublime and beautiful,'the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether.

It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that everyone was forsaking me and going away from me.

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