"At such moments the collapse of their courage, willpower, and endurance was so abrupt that they felt they could never drag themselves out of the pit of despond into which they had fallen. Therefore they forced themselves never to think about the problematic day of escape, to cease looking to the future, and always to keep, so to speak, their eyes fixed on the ground at their feet. But, naturally enough, this prudence, this habit of feinting with their predicament and refusing to put up a fight, was ill rewarded. For, while averting that revulsion which they found so unbearable, they also deprived themselves of those redeeming moments, frequent enough when all is told, when by conjuring up pictures of a reunion to be, they could forget about the plague. Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress."
— Albert Camus

"The slow arrow of beauty. The most noble kind of beauty is that which does not carry us away suddenly, whose attacks are not violent or intoxicating (this kind easily awakens disgust), but rather the kind of beauty which infiltrates slowly, which we carry along with us almost unnoticed, and meet up with again in dreams; finally, after it has for a long time lain modestly in our heart, it takes complete possession of us, filling our eyes with tears, our hearts with longing. What do we long for when we see beauty? To be beautiful. We think much happiness must be connected with it. But that is an error.
"
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Remorse.-- Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Meaning and morality of One's life come from within oneself. Healthy, strong individuals seek self expansion by experimenting and by living dangerously. Life consists of an infinite number of possibilities and the healthy person explores as many of them as posible. Religions that teach pity, self-contempt, humility, self-restraint and guilt are incorrect. The good life is ever changing, challenging, devoid of regret, intense, creative and risky."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"One must pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while still alive."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen. Few in pursuit of the goal."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage"
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"I love him who seeks to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"He who has attained the freedom of reason to any extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth - and not even as a traveler towards a final goal, for there is no such thing. But he certainly wants to observe and keep his eyes open to whatever actually happens in the world; therefore he cannot attach his heart too firmly to anything individual; he must have in himself something wandering that takes pleasure in change and transitoriness."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"There is always madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge-a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest. "
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ)

"There are terrible people who, instead of solving a problem, bungle it and make it more difficult for all who come after. Whoever can't hit the nail on the head should, please, not hit at all."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"...and those seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who couldn't hear the music."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Remain faithful to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue. Let your gift-giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth. Thus I beg and beseech you. Do not let them fly away from earthly things and beat with their wings against eternal walls. Alas, there has always been so much virtue that has flown away. Lead back to the earth the virtue that flew away, as I do—back to the body, back to life, that it may give the earth a meaning, a human meaning."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
— Oscar Wilde

"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."
— Oscar Wilde

"I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there."
— Oscar Wilde

"A good friend will always stab you in the front."
— Oscar Wilde

"Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power."
— Oscar Wilde

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."
— Oscar Wilde

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."
— Oscar Wilde

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."
— Oscar Wilde

"I have nothing to declare except my genius."
— Oscar Wilde

"I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world."
— Oscar Wilde

"When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands."
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)

"Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is [hu]man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion."
— Oscar Wilde

"Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard
Some do it with a bitter look
Some with a flattering word
The coward does it with a kiss
The brave man with a sword"
— Oscar Wilde

"A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her."
— Oscar Wilde

"I won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!"
— Oscar Wilde

"...the great events of the world take place in the brain..."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself. "
— Oscar Wilde

"For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. That is not such a tragic thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those who are in prison tears are a part of every day's experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is happy."
— Oscar Wilde (De Profundis and Other Writings)

"A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes, it was an interesting background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic."
— Oscar Wilde

"Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me."
— Robert Frost

"I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way."
— Robert Frost

"I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those people."
— John Lennon

"The reason fat men are good natured is they can neither fight nor run."
— Theodore Roosevelt

"Although not a very old man, I have yet lived a great deal in my life, and I have known sorrow too bitter and joy too keen to allow me to become either cast down or elated for more than a very brief period over any success or defeat."
— Theodore Roosevelt

"And it is through strife and the readiness for strife that a man or a nation must win greatness. So, let the world know that we are here and willing to pour out our blood, our treasure, our tears. And that America is ready and if need be desirous of battle"
— Theodore Roosevelt

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
— Albert Camus

"Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble – yes, gamble – with a whole part of their life and their so called 'vital interests."
— Albert Camus