“When I curse Fate, it’s not me, but the earth in me.”

And now I am ready to keep running When the sun rises beyond the borderlands of death. I already see mountain ridges in the heavenly forest Where, beyond every essence, a new essence awaits.

In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.

What has no shadow has no strength to live.

It was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy.

I imagine the earth when I am no more: Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

I’ve always regretted that I’m made of contradictions. But, if contradiction is impossible to overcome, we have to accept both its ends.

Our memory is childish and it saves only what we need.

A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.

Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting.

From life, from the apple cut by the flaming knife, what grain will be saved? My son, believe me, nothing remains, Only adult toil, the furrow of fate in the palm. Only toil, Nothing more.

When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.

Consciousness even in my sleep changes primary colors. The features of my face melt like a wax doll in the fire. And who can consent to see in the mirror the mere face of man?

On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net.

He returns years later, has no demands. He wants only one, most precious thing: To see, purely and simply, without name, Without expectations, fears, or hopes, At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.

I think that I am here, on this earth, to present a report on it, but to whom I don’t know. As if I were sent so that whatever takes place has meaning because it changes into memory.

And then away for home! Away to the quickest and nearest train! Away from this cursed land, where the devil and his children stil walk with earthly feet!

Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.

I’m a father; I’m a friend. I think I’ve got the biggest heart in the world. A lot of times, that’s not a good thing. It’s a gift and a curse.

Children curse their parents for their wrinkled skin and hoarse voices. Those now old children also want to stop time, but at another time. They want to freeze their own children at the center of time.

It was the year you learned that shooting stars were either a blessing or a curse, depending on what you wanted to believe.

Beer is a gift from the goddesses, a soothing balm given our species to bring joy and comfort in compensation for the curse of self-awareness.

I tend to curse in French more often than I do in English.

The author brings to the table a healthy skepticism of the conventional wisdom, an admirable ability to separate fact from fancy, and an undisguised repugnance for the mumbo-jumbo that’s the curse of so much commentary on anything to do with economics or investment.