Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.

Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends.

What is false in the science of facts may be true in the science of values.

The family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational. If the race had developed a special sexless class to be nurses, pedagogues, and slaves, like the workers among ants and bees, then the family would have been unnecessary. Such a division of labor would doubtless have involved evils of its own, but it would have obviated some drags and vexations proper to the family.

Existence is a miracle, and, morally considered, a free gift from moment to moment.

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

I feel so much the continual death of everything and everybody, and have so learned to reconcile myself to it, that the final and official end loses most of its impressiveness.