Every great love brings with it the cruel idea of killing the object of its love so that it may be removed once and for all from the wicked game of change: for love dreads change even more than annihilation.
To escape boredom, man works either beyond what his usual needs require, or else he invents play, that is, work that is designed to quiet no need other than that for working in general.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu , virtue free of moral acid).
We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.
A vocation makes us unthinking; that is its greatest blessing. For it is a bulwark behind which we are permitted to withdraw whencommonplace doubts and cares assail us.
The moral earth, too, is round! The moral earth, too, has its antipodes! The antipodes, too, have their right to exist! There is still another world to be discovered--and more than one! Set sail, you philosophers!