“Poverty is a virtue which one can teach oneself.”

“A master can teach many things. But the most important lesson for a ninja is to learn oneself.”

“Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.”

“There are a set of religious, or rather moral writers, who teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery, in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.”

“And that next day, he was in the black mood, what we call the swartgalligheid, which is the black gall. And the heart is black too, and the world is black, and one can tell oneself that it will pass, but these are only words that one speaks to oneself, for while it is there it is no comfort that it will pass.”

“One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.”