“It is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”

“Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”

“Happiness is good for the body, but it is grief which develops the strengths of the mind.”

“These dreams reminded me that, since I wished some day to become a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried to discover some subject to which I could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock, my consciousness would be faced with a blank, I would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent or perhaps that some malady of the brain was hindering its development.”

“For in this worldof ours where everything withers, everything perishes, there is a thing that decays, that crumbles into dust even more completely, leaving behind, still fewer traces of itself, than beauty: namely, grief.”

“We have such numerous interests in our lives that it is not uncommon, on a single occasion, for the foundations of a happiness that does not yet exist to be laid down alongside the intensification of a grief from which we are still suffering.”

“Having a body is in itself the greatest threat to the mind... The body encloses the mind in a fortress; before long the mind is besieged on all sides, and in the end the mind has to give itself up.”