Life and Existence

Old age was growing inside me. It kept catching my eye from the depths of the mirror. I was paralyzed sometimes as I saw it make its way for me so steadily when nothing inside me was ready for it.

Old age was growing inside me. It kept catching my eye from the depths of the mirror. I was paralyzed sometimes as I saw it make its way for me so steadily when nothing inside me was ready for it.

In old age our bodies are worn-out instruments, on which the soul tries in vain to play the melodies of youth. But because the instrument has lost its strings, or is out of tune, it does not follow that the musician has lost his skill.

In old age our bodies are worn-out instruments, on which the soul tries in vain to play the melodies of youth. But because the instrument has lost its strings, or is out of tune, it does not follow that the musician has lost his skill.

One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.

There are many rare abilities in the world which Fortune never brings to light.

In moments of progress the noble succeed, because things are going their way: in moments of decadence the base succeed for the same reason: hence the world is never without the exhilaration of contemporary success.

Decadence can find agents only when it wears the mask of progress.

Mens sana in corpore sano is a foolish saying. The sound body is a product of the sound mind.

Mens sana in corpore sano is a foolish saying. The sound body is a product of the sound mind.

No man dares say so much of what he thinks as to appear to himself an extremist.

The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery.

Gambling promises the poor what Property performs for the rich: that is why the bishops dare not denounce it fundamentally.

Life levels all men: death reveals the eminent.

Life levels all men: death reveals the eminent.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.

The difference between the shallowest routineer and the deepest thinker appears, to the latter, trifling; to the former, infinite.

We admit that when the divinity we worshipped made itself visible and comprehensible we crucified it.

Greatness is the secular name for Divinity: both mean simply what lies beyond us.

You cannot believe in honor until you have achieved it. Better keep yourself clean and bright: you are the window through which you must see the world.

Imprisonment is as irrevocable as death.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

IT IS WHAT YOU READ WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE TO THAT DETERMINES WHAT YOU WILL BE WHEN YOU CAN’T HELP IT.