why shouldnt things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? they are so, and we are so, and they and we go together.

Does the thoughtful man suppose that...the present experiment in civilization is the last world we will see?

Philosophy is a more intense sort of experience than common life is, just as pure and subtle music, heard in retirement, is something keener and more intense than the howling of storms or the rumble of cities.

The hunger for facile wisdom is the root of all false philosophy.

Experience is a mere whiff or rumble, produced by enormously complex and ill-deciphered causes of experience; and in the other direction, experience is a mere peephole through which glimpses come down to us of eternal things.

Mortality has its compensations; one is that all evils are transitory, another that better times may come.

Sanctity and genius are as rebellious as vice.