“I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.”

“To caress the serpent that devours us, until it has eaten away our heart.”

“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”

“Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.”

“when man was put into the garden of eden, he was put there with the idea that he should work the land; and this proves that man was not born to be idle.”

“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”

“What can be feared when one is doing one's duty? I know the rage of my enemies. I know all their slanders; but when one only tries to do good to men and when one does not offend heaven, one can fear nothing, neither during life nor after death.”