“Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.”

“What disturbs and depresses young people is the hunt for happiness on the firm assumption that it must be met with in life. From this arises constantly deluded hope and so also dissatisfaction. Dec...”

“If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare i...”

“We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.”

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”

“We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.”

“The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. ...”

“From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back.”

“This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked high...”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”