Perhaps the universe is nothing but an equilibrium of idiocies.

Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them.

By "essence" I understand a universal, of any degree of complexity and definition, which may be given immediately, whether to sense or to thought.... This object of pure sense or pure thought, with no belief superadded, an object inwardly complete and individual, but without external relations or physical status, is what I call an essence.

Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape.

Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience.

Music is essentially useless, as is life.

Music contains a whole gamut of experience, from sensuous elements to ultimate intellectual harmonies.