We have to keep company with supposedly bad characters if we are to survive and not succumb to mental atrophy. People of good character, so called, are the ones who end up boring us to death.

everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death

A criminal is undoubtedly a poor soul, who is punished for his poverty.

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.

You've always lived a life of pretense, not a real life-- a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real.

What is ridiculous about human beings, Doctor,' the prince said, 'is actually their total incapacity to be ridiculous

The only friends I have are the dead who have bequeathed their writings to me — I have no others.