To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.

You must squeeze out of yourself every sensation, every thought, every image, - mercilessly, without reserve and without remorse: you must search the darkest corners of your heart, the most remote recesses of your brain, - you must search them for the image, for the glamour, for the right expression. And you must do it sincerely, at any cost: you must do it so that at the end of your day's work you should feel exhausted, emptied of every sensation and every thought, with a blank mind and an aching heart, with the notion that there is nothing, - nothing left in you.

Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.

Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you, smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, "Come and find out".

I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance.

It occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility.

The ethical view of the universe involves us in so many cruel and absurd contradictions that I have come to suspect that the aim of creation cannot be ethical at all.