Zeno's Conscience

by Italo Svevo

also feel that a preached immorality is more to be punished that an immoral action. You arrive at murder through love or through hate; you propagandize murder only through wickedness.

Natural law does not entitle us to happiness, but rather it prescribes wretchedness and sorrow.

When my eyes closed, however, in the darkness I saw that her words had created a new world, like all words that are not true.

I wanted again May roses in December.

In psychoanalysis there is never repetition, neither of the same images

The sun didn’t illuminate me! When you are old, you remain in shadow, even when you have wit.

Sorrow and love—life, in other words—cannot be considered a sickness because they hurt.

Under the law established by the possessor of the greatest number of devices, sickness and the sick will flourish.