Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.
There is nothing good in this world that does not have some filth in its origin.
Any idiot can face a crisis – it’s day to day living that wears you out.
You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe
Science and art,… they seek the truth and the meaning of life, they seek God, [and] the soul, and when they are harnessed to passing needs and activities,… then they only complicate and encumber life.
And what does it mean — dying? Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and only the five we know are lost at death, while the other ninety-five remain alive.
You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don’t want to understand you.
After us they’ll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they’ll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the same, a hard life full of secrets, but happy. And a thousand years from now man will still be sighing, Oh! Life is so hard! and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.
Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.