…but it is in despair that the most burning pleasures occur…

A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.

But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.

I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.

It is a law of nature that every decent man on earth is bound to be a coward and a slave

I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend that I am satisfied when I am hungry.

For though your mind is active enough, your heart is darkened with corruption, and without a pure heart there can be no full or genuine sensibility.

Man is fond of reckoning up his troubles, but does not count his joys.

What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning...

Man only likes counting his grief, he doesn't count his happiness. But if he were to count properly, he'd see that there's enough of both lots for him.

If you want to know how to swim, you take lessons. If you want to walk on water, lessons won´t help you, just faith.

Reality might be described as the eternal equipoise of positive and negative.

The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.

The society would never dictate the pace of your life on earth, if you truly know who you are and what you positively stand for.

We are a European nation - must stay one.

God, just shoot me the day I start making music you can just put on in the car and have a conversation over it.

You grow up and change your look. I feel different from how I did in my Playboy days. Now I think I'm in charge of toning down my look or not.

I don't really say too much to my parents. If they ask me to do something I just do it and get it out of the way.

Geometry is one of the handles of science and philosophy.

I mean, nobody's ever thrown a big rock at me or my friends, but we're all pretty tough guys and could probably handle it.