Candide

by Voltaire

“Men,” he said, “must have corrupted nature a little, because they weren't born wolves, yet they've become wolves: God didn't give them twenty-four-pounders or bayonets, but they've made themselves bayonets and cannons with which to destroy each other.

I've wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but I still love life. That ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our most pernicious inclinations. What could be more stupid than to persist in carrying a burden that we constantly want to cast off, to hold our existence in horror, yet cling to it nonetheless, to fondle the serpent that devours us, until it has eaten our heart?

“it's a mania for insisting that everything is all right when everything is going wrong.”