“Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.

“Pierre's insanity consisted in the face that he did not wait, as before, for personal reasons, which he called people's merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was worth loving them.”

“And for him, who lived in a certain circle, and who required some mental activity such as usually develops with maturity, having views was as necessary as having a hat.”

“A wife's a worry, a non-wife's even worse.”

“What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the world!”

“without knowing who I am and why I’m here it is impossible to live. Yet I cannot know that and therefore I cannot live”

“It can't be that life is so senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong!”

“The march of humanity, springing as it does from an infinite multitude of individual wills, is continuous.”

“Formerly...when he tried to do anything for the good of everybody, for humanity...for the whole village, he had noticed that the thoughts of it were agreeable, but the activity itself was always unsatisfactory; there was no full assurance that the work was really necessary, and the activity itself, which at first seemed so great, ever lessened and lessened till it vanished. But now...when he began to confine himself more and more to living for himself, though he no longer felt any joy at the thought of his activity, he felt confident that his work was necessary, saw that it progressed far better than formerly, and that it was always growing more and more.”

“Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle could last you all your life”

“A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body.”

“Life is fragile and absurd.

“it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”

“My brother's death: wise, good, serious, he fell ill while still a young man, suffered for more than a year, and died painfully, not understanding why he had lived and still less why he had to die. No theories could give me, or him, any reply to these questions during his slow and painful dying.”

“Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was someone who amused himself by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit -- like an arch-fool -- seeing clearly that there is nothing in life, and that there has been and will be nothing. And he was amused... But whether that "someone" laughing at me existed or not, I was none the better off. I could give no reasonable meaning to any single action or to my whole life. I was only surprised that I could have avoided understanding this from the very beginning -- it has been so long known to all. Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort?... How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty about it, it is simply cruel and stupid.”