Three-fourths of philosophy & literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering.

The world has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Turgenev, and completed by Dostoevsky. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as surely as the People's Palace rose out debris of a novel. Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose.

Kein Philosoph würde ein dickes Buch schreiben, wenn er im Vornherein wüsste, auf welche Weise er später zitiert werden wird.

Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!

Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.

Body is a home, a prison and a grave.