“What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,What mighty contests rise from trivial things,...”

“The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.”

“It ought to be a criminal offence for women to dye their hair. Especially red. What the devil do women do that sort of thing for?”

“Looking at the pond, all I could think was that it is an incredivle thing, how a whole world can rise from what seems like nothing at all.”

“All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”

“For as there are misanthropists, or haters of men, there are also misologists, or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world.”