"The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'real' life. The truth is, of course, that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's re…"

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival."

"When I was a child I was too old for my age and now I am an old man I am too young for my age."

"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imag…"

"I can imagine a man being so immersed in his own troubles that he does not attend to the sufferings of others, but I cannot imagine a man being so happy that he does not attend to the sufferings of ot…"