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.

There is a kind way of assisting our fellow-creatures which is enough to break their hearts while it saves their outer envelope.

... it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.

There is no peace and no rest in the development of material interests. They have their law, and their justice. But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman; it is without rectitude, without the continuity and the force that can be found only in a moral principle.

The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain -- why he did not instantly disappear.