Ben

“If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse.

And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humoured these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Unfulfilled Wish

A woman in Atzbach was murdered by her husband because, in his opinion, she had carried the wrong child with her to safety from their burning house. She had not saved their eight-year old son, for whom the man had special plans, but had saved their daughter, who was not loved by the husband. When the husband was asked, in the District Court in Wels, what plans he had had for his son, who had been completely consumed by the fire, the husband replied that he had intended him to be an anarchist and a mass murderer of dictatorships and thus a destroyer of the state.”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Voice Imitator

“You will find yourself among people.
There is no help for this
nor should you want it otherwise.
The passages where no one waits are dark
and hard to navigate.
The wet walls touch your shoulders on each side.
When the trees were there I cared that they were there.
And now they are gone, does it matter?
The passages where no one waits go on
and give no promise of an end.
You will find yourself among people,
Faces, clothing, teeth and hair
and words, and many words
When there was life, I said that life was wrong.
What do I say now? You understand?”
― Paul Bowles

“The usual heresy consists in denying the existence of a god who has created us. It is a much more interesting heresy to imagine that possibly a god has created us and then to say that there isn't the least reason for us to be impressed by that fact. And certainly not to be thankful for it.”
― Lars Gustafsson, The Death of a Beekeeper