“How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.”

“In a sense, I'm mad (and withdrawn from life) while they're sane, human, normal - but in another sense, I speak from the depths of a vision of truth when I say that this continual jockeying for position is the enemy of life in itself. It may be life, 'life is like that,' it may be human and true, but it's also the death-part of life, and our purpose after all is to live and be true. We'll see.”

“Dualism is the closest human feeling, but it is not necessarily the highest human philosophy. On the contrary, all great philosophies have been monistic. Man experiences the world dualistically, but monism is the essence of all human thinking. Philosophy disagrees with dualism. However, this fact does not mean too much, because life, being superior to thought, may not be judged by it. In reality, since we are human beings, we are living two realities. We can deny these two worlds, but we cannot escape from them. Life does not depend too much on our understanding of it.”

“Perhaps the greatest strike against philosophical pessimism is that its only theme is human suffering. This is the last item on the list of our species’ obsessions and detracts from everything that matters to us, such as the Good, the Beautiful, and a Sparking Clean Toilet Bowl. For the pessimist, everything considered in isolation from human suffering or any cognition that does not have as its motive the origins, nature, and elimination of human suffering is at base recreational, whether it takes the form of conceptual probing or physical action in the world—for example, delving into game theory or traveling in outer space, respectively. And by “human suffering,” the pessimist is not thinking of particular sufferings and their relief, but of suffering itself. Remedies may be discovered for certain diseases and sociopolitical barbarities may be amended. But those are only stopgaps. Human suffering will remain insoluble as long as human beings exist. The one truly effective solution for suffering is that spoken of in Zapffe’s “Last Messiah.” It may not be a welcome solution for a stopgap world, but it would forever put an end to suffering, should we ever care to do so. The pessimist’s credo, or one of them, is that nonexistence never hurt anyone and existence hurts everyone. Although our selves may be illusory creations of consciousness, our pain is nonetheless real.”

“In the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possessions and human successes, but on how well we have loved.”

“The word amen, which found its way from Judaism into Christianity and Islam, crossing cultures and continents, borders and chasms, is in fact an acronym of the Hebrew phrase ‘el melech ne’eman.’ Spoken in response to a blessing, it means: the words of the blessing are true and may they come to pass…Since that word is so universal, it symbolizes for me, much as literature does, everything that we, all of humanity, have in common despite the differences in our way of thinking, in our faith, and our inner and outer landscapes, the living, quivering hope of every human being for forgiveness, salvation, mercy. And so I think that even the very fact of its existence is comforting, although all our wishes may not come true.”