“Isn't joyful or painful this pain in which I rejoice”

“AutopsychographyThe poet is a man who feignsAnd feigns so thoroughly, at lastHe manages to feign as painThe pain he really feels,And those who read what once he wroteFeel clearly, in the pain they read,Neither of the pains he felt,Only a pain they cannot sense.And thus, around its jolting trackThere runs, to keep our reason busy,The circling clockwork train of oursThat men agree to call a heart.”

“There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.”

“Lord, may the pain be ours, And the weakness that it brings, But at least give us the strength, Of not showing it to anyone!”

“...the painful intensity of my sensations, even when they're happy ones; the blissful intensity of my sensations, even when they're sad.”

“I’ve always wanted to be liked. It grieved me that I was treated with indifference. Left an orphan by Fortune, I wanted—like all orphans—to be the object of someone’s affection. This need has always been a hunger that went unsatisfied, and so thoroughly have I adapted to this inevitable hunger that I sometimes wonder if I really feel the need to eat.Whatever be the case, life pains me.”

“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”