“Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.”

“We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection--which we have ourselves created.”

“It's true that nothing in this world makes us so necessary to others as the affection we have for them.”

“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.”

“When I consider the narrow limits within which our active and inquiring faculties are confined; when I see how all our energies are wasted in providing for mere necessities, which again have no further end than to prolong a wretched existence; and then that all our satisfaction concerning certain subjects of investigation ends in nothing better than a passive resignation... when I consider all this... I am silent.”

“I wish someone would dare reproach me about the whole thing so that I could run a dagger through his heart. If only I could see blood. I know I would feel better. Oh, I have picked up a knife a hundred times with the intention of plunging it into my own heart! I have heard tell of a noble breed of stallions who when they are overheated and run wild, instinctively bite open one of their veins to relieve themselves. I feel like that often. I would like to open the vein that would give me eternal freedom.”

“Your suns and worlds are not within my ken,I merely watch the plaguey state of men.The little god of earth remains the same queer spriteAs on the first day, or in primal light.His life would be less difficult, poor thing,Without your gift of heavenly glimmering;He calls it Reason, using light celestialJust to outdo the beasts in being bestial.To me he seems, with deference to Your Grace,One of those crickets, jumping round the place,Who takes his flying leaps, with legs so long,Then falls to grass and chants the same old song;But, not content with grasses to repose in,This one will hunt for muck to stick his nose in.”