“For where did Dante get the material for his Hell, if not from this actual world of ours?”

“For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it.”

“The actual life of a thought lasts only until it reaches the point of speech...As soon as our thinking has found words it ceases to be sincere...When it begins to exist in others it ceases to live in us, just as the child severs itself from its mother when it enters into its own existence.”

“There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one's efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire.”

“In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties. ”

“Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.”

“If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature.”