Our whole life is taken up with anxiety for personal security, with preparations for living, so that we really never live at all.

The magnanimity and sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she is so kindhearted that she can't look at blood, but enjoys eating the calf served up with sauce.

Not all of life's roads are set fast, for a man may do this or a man may do that and not even the gods know the mind of a man.

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.

He remembered his mother's love for him, and his family's, and his friends', and the enemy's intention to kill him seemed impossible.

The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people's memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something.