I have so much to say to you that I am afraid I shall tell you nothing.
The whole question here is: am I a monster, or a victim myself?
Full freedom will come only when it makes no difference whether to live or not to live. That’s the goal for everyone.
The dreamer – if you want an exact definition – is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort.
But you are a great sinner, that’s true,” he added almost solemnly, and your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.
One cannot love what one does not know.
Silence is always beautiful, and a silent person is always more beautiful than one who talks.
You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education.
If I had had the power to prevent my own birth I should certainly never have consented to accept existence under such ridiculous conditions.
I’ll go this minute!′ Of course, I remained.
Oh, gentlemen, do you know, perhaps I consider myself an intelligent man, only because all my life I have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything. Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?
I tell you, the old-fashioned doctor who treated all diseases has completely disappeared, now there are only specialists, and they advertise all the time in the newspapers. If your nose hurts, they send you to Paris: there’s a European specialist there, he treats noses. You go to Paris, he examines your nose: I can treat only your right nostril, he says, I don’t treat left nostrils, it’s not my specialty, but after me, go to Vienna, there’s a separate specialist there who will finish treating your left nostril.
A fool is always pleased with what he says, and, besides, he always says more than he needs to.
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying – to others and to yourself.
I left proud, but with my spirit crushed.
Life is given to me only once, and never will be again – I don’t want to sit waiting for universal happiness. I want to live myself; otherwise it’s better not to live at all.
I create entire romances in my dreams.
In any case civilization has made mankind if not more blood-thirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely blood-thirsty. In old days he saw justice in bloodshed and with his conscience at peace exterminated those he thought proper. Now we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more energy than ever. Which is worse? Decide that for yourselves.
The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.
I was especially happy when, going to bed and covering myself with a blanket, I began, alone now, in the most complete solitude, with no people moving around and not a single sound from them, to re-create life in a different key.