We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
I wish to weep but sorrow is stupid. I wish to believe but belief is a graveyard.
You know how both life and porno movies end. The only difference is life starts with the orgasm.
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 sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?
I can't seem to be a pessimist long enough to overlook the possibility of things being overwhelmingly good.
You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down
A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.
If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.
I'm not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.
When things are at their blackest, I say to myself, 'Cheer up, things could be worse.' And sure enough, they get worse.
The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole! We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back.
This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?
See the moon? It hates us.
In my heart's most secret place, I pity them as angels do.
For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible
There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable.
Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.
Once is never. Twice is always.
How we look at life and how we feel shape each other.
