Reader > Reader's Quotes

“Alas," said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into."
"You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.”
― Franz Kafka

“There are times when I am convinced I am unfit for any human relationship.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

“2 November. This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“I feel an unhappiness which almost dismembers me, and at the same time am convinced of its necessity”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The soul is healed by being with children.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we’re both unhappy, and we both suffer.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“Truly great men must, I think, experience great sorrow on the earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“They were like two enemies in love with one another.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?”
― Emil Cioran

“What do you do from morning to night?"

"I endure myself.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. The answer probably lies in the irrational character of life which maintains itself without reason.”
― Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

“We are so lonely in life that we must ask ourselves if the loneliness of dying is not a symbol of our human existence.”
― Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

“I'm simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?”
― Emil Cioran

“What I know at sixty, I knew as well at twenty. Forty years of a long, a superfluous, labor of verification.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“Tell me how you want to die, and I’ll tell you who you are.”
― Emil Cioran, Tears and Saints

“The danger of insanity is always present in those who try to penetrate the discipline of logic and pure knowledge.”
― Otto Weininger

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche