“I would rather obey a fine lion, much stronger than myself, than two hundred rats of my own species.”

“For can anything be sillier than to insist on carrying a burden one would continually much rather throw to the ground?”

“What can you say to a man who tells you he prefers obeying God rather than men, and that as a result he's certain he'll go to heaven if he cuts your throat?”

“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?”

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”

“I have no more than twenty acres of ground," he replied, "the whole of which I cultivate myself with the help of my children; and our labor keeps off from us the three great evils - boredom, vice, and want.”

“If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated."(Notebooks)”