Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!

As for work, without it, without painstaking work, any writer or artist definitely remains a dilettante; there's no point in waiting for so-called blissful moments, for inspiration; if it comes, so much the better--but you keep working anyway.

What's terrible is that there's nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.

What did I hope for, what did I expect, what rich future did I foresee, when the phantom of my first love, rising up for an instant, barely called forth one sigh, one mournful sentiment?

I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life.

That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.

Each individual is more or less dimly aware of his significance, is aware that he's something innately superior, something eternal--and lives, is obligated to live, in the moment and for the moment.