“Posterity has never made the grave's embrace less cruel. It simply assuages our fear of death, because there is no better cure for out inevitable morality then the illusion of a beautiful eternity. But there is one illusion I still hold dear: that is the thought of an enlightened nation. That is the only future I still dream of.”

“Get a grip on yourself. there's only one god here on earth, and that's you. If you don't like the world, make one you like better.”

“When dreams are turned away, death becomes the ultimate salvation….There are only two extremes in human madness: the instant when you become aware of your own impotence and the instant when you become aware of the vulnerability of others. It’s a question of accepting one’s madness…or suffering it.”

“You cannot change what's written in the stars. Liar! Later, much later, I would come to this realisation: nothing is written. If it were, there would be no need fo trials, morality would be an ageing hag and shame would not blush in the presence of vertue. Though there are things beyond our understaning, for the most part we are the architects of our own unhappiness.”

“I just want to be able to live my share of existence without being obliged to detract from the existence of others. I don't belive in prophecies that favor suffering over common sense. I came naked into the world, I'll leave it naked, what I possess doesn't belong to me, and neither do other people's lives. All human unhappiness comes from this misunderstanding. You have to be prepared to give back what God has loaned you. No earthly thing belongs to you, not really. Neither the homeland you talk about nor the grave where you'll be dust among the dust.”

“If you want your life to be a small part of eternity, to be lucid even in the heart of madness, love... Love with all your strength, love as though it is all you know how to do, love enough to make the gods themselves jealous... for it is in love that all ugliness reveals its beauty.”

“And ever since then, even though I was growing up in a land that had been tormented since the dawn of time, I refused to consider the world as a battlefield. I could see that wars beget wars, that reprisals follow reprisals, but I forbade myself to give them any support of any kind. I didn’t believe in prophesies of discord, and I couldn’t bring myself to accept the notion that God could incite his subjects to take up arms against one another and reduce the exercise of faith to an absurd and frightening question of power relationships.And ever since then, I’ve trusted anyone who required a little of my blood to purify my soul about as much as I would trust a scorpion. I have no desire to believe in valves of tears or valleys of shadows- there are other more charming and less irrational features of the landscape all around me. My father said, “Anyone who tells you that a greater symphony exists than the breath in your body is lying. He wants to undermine your most beautiful possession: the chance to profit from every moment of your life. If you start from the principle that your worst enemy is the very person who tries to sow hatred in your heart, your halfway to happiness. All you have to do is reach out your hand and take the rest. And remember this: there is nothing, absolutely nothing, more important than your life. And your life isn’t more important than other people’s lives”