Oh, how unbearable is a happy person sometimes!
Without a clear perception of his reasons for living, man will never consent to live, and will rather destroy himself than tarry on earth, though he be surrounded with bread”.
In despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one’s position.
There is, indeed, nothing more annoying than to be, for instance, wealthy, of good family, nice-looking, fairly intelligent, and even good-natured, and yet to have no talents, no special faculty, no peculiarity even, not one idea of one’s own, to be precisely “like other people.
The secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for.
But what are years, what are months!” he would exclaim. “Why count the days, when even one day is enough for man to know all happiness.
Let it not be a beautiful face,′ I thought, ’but to make up for that, let it be a noble, an expressive, and, above all, an extremely intelligent one.
It’s precisely in despair that you find the most intense pleasure, especially if you are already powerfully conscious of the hopelessness of your predicament.
And what does it mean – ridiculous? wWhat does it matter how many times a man is or seems to be ridiculous? Besides, nowadays almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.
Young man, do not forget to pray. Each time you pray, if you do so sincerely, there will be the flash of a new feeling in it, and a new thought as well, one you did not know before, which will give you fresh courage; and you will understand that prayer is education.
I think man will never renounce real suffering, that is destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.
We’ve got facts,” they say. But facts aren’t everything; at least half the battle consists in how one makes use of them!
Why, you are so eaten up with pride and vanity that you’ll end by eating up one another, that’s what I prophecy.
Very often among a certain highly intelligent type of people, quite paradoxical ideas will establish themselves. But they have suffered so much in their lives for these ideas, and have paid so high a price for them that it becomes very painful, indeed almost impossible, for them to part with them.
Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.
If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be permissible, even cannibalism.
I’m sorry this letter is so long. I didn’t have time to make it shorter.
No man lives, can live, without having some object in view, and making efforts to attain that object. But when object there is none, and hope is entirely fled, anguish often turns a man into a monster.
If one waits for everyone to get wiser it will take too long.
What is honour, my dear, when you have nothing to eat?