“Life is a nightmare that prevents one from sleeping.”

“Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.”

“Misfortunes one can endure--they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults--ah!--there is the sting of life.”

“They've promised that dreams can come true - but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.”

“Human life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.”

“One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.”

“To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.”