Why must you always try to be omnipotent, and shove things about? Tragic things happen sometimes that we just have to submit to.

Destiny is another name for humanity's half-hearted yet persistent search for death. Again and again peoples have had the chance to live and show what would happen if human life were irrigated by continual happiness; and they have preferred to blow up the canals and perish of drought.

The principle of avoiding the unnecessary expenditure of energy has enabled the species to survive in a world full of stimuli; but it prevents the survival of the aristocracy.

it is necessary that we should all have a little of the will to die, because otherwise we would find the performance of our biological duty of death too difficult.

Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted.

the reward for total abstinence from alcohol seems, illogically enough, to be the capacity for becoming intoxicated without it.

To those who fall and hurt themselves one runs with comfort; by those who lie dangerously stricken by a disease one sits and waits.