Just as a satisfaction of instinct spells happiness for us, so severe suffering is caused us if the external world lets us starve, if it refuses to sate our needs. One may therefore hope to be freed from a part of one's sufferings by influencing the instinctual impulses.

Perhaps the gods are kind to us, by making life more disagreeable as we grow older. In the end death seems less intolerable than the manifold burdens we carry

In the depths of my heart I can’t help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless.

When the wayfarer whistles in the dark, he may be disavowing his timidity, but he does not see any the more clearly for doing so.

But the less a man knows about the past and the present the more insecure must prove to be his judgment of the future.

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter.