Let people who do not know what to do with themselves in this life, but fritter away their time reading magazines and watching television, hope for eternal life... The life I want is a life I could not endure in eternity. It is a life of love and intensity, suffering and creation, that makes life worthwhile and death welcome. There is no other life I should prefer. Neither should I like not to die.

The refusal to belong to any school of thought, the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life-that is the heart of existentialism.

The first function of a book review should be, I believe, to give some idea of the contents and character of the book.

The great artist is the man who most obviously succeeds in turning his pains to advantage, in letting suffering deepen his understanding and sensibility, in growing through his pains.

Reason may not always tell us what to believe, but it can help us on what we shouldn't believe.

The deepest difference between religions is not that between polytheism and monotheism.

No other German writer of comparable stature has been a more extreme critic of German nationalism than Nietzsche.