It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.

Our greatest pleasure, surely, is in fragments, just as we derive the most pleasure from life if we regard it as a fragment, whereas the whole and the complete and the perfect are basically abhorrent.

People keep a dog and are ruled by this dog, and even Schopenhauer was ruled in the end not by his head, but by his dog. This fact is more depressing than any other.

I avoid literature whenever possible, because whenever possible I avoid myself.

We publish only to satisfy out craving for fame; there's no other motive except the even baser one of making money.

In theory we understand people, but in practice we can't put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn't possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.

I did not want to be anything, and naturally I did not want to turn myself into a mere profession: all I ever wanted was to be myself.