“Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being – like a worm.”

You’re lucky. I’m always conscious of myself —in my mind. Painfully conscious.

A madman’s ravings are absurd in relation to the situation in which he finds himself, but not in relation to his madness.

It is disgusting – Why must we have bodies?

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

Hell is – other people!

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

A man is involved in life, leaves his impress on it, and outside of that there is nothing.

We are our choices.

Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.

I never could bear the idea of anyone’s expecting something from me. It always made me want to do the opposite.

I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.

I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.

There is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

The consciousness that says ‘I am’ is not the consciousness that thinks.

He is always becoming, and if it were not for the contingency of death, he would never end.

The one excellent thing that can be learned from a lion is that whatever a man intends doing should be done by him with a whole-hearted and strenuous effort.

We should always speak what would please the man of whom we expect a favor, like the hunter who sings sweetly when he desires to shoot a deer.

Union in privacy (with one’s wife); boldness; storing away useful items; watchfulness; and not easily trusting others; these five things are to be learned from a crow.

A person becomes great not be sitting on some high seat, but through higher qualities. Can a crow become an eagle by simply sitting on the top of a palatial building?

I have always cared about the Indian Rhinos & am speaking up for these mighty beings.

Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins that may buy you just a moment of pleasure, But then drag you for days like a broken man behind a farting camel.

Eating meat and drinking liquor are demonic vices. Those indulging in drink lose all sense of propriety, have no compassion or love and become demons.

The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.