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Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

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What disturbs and depresses young people is the hunt for happiness on the firm assumption that it must be met with in life. From this arises constantl...more

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Any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle.

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They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to w...more

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If you want a safe compass to guide you through life, and to banish all doubt as to the right way of looking at it, you cannot do better than accustom...more

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If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sy...more

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If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as bor...more

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Boredom is certainly not an evil to be taken lightly: it will ultimately etch lines of true despair onto a face. It makes beings with as little love f...more

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The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but g...more

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What keeps all living things busy and in motion is the striving to exist. But when existence is secured, they do not know what to do: that is why the ...more

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The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

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If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the miseries of boredom.

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We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.

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It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the t...more

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The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party when the masks are dropped.