If it is true that by death we once more become what we were before being, would it not have been better to abide by that pure possibility, not to stir from it? What use was this detour, when we might have remained forever in an unrealized plenitude?

To live in solitude means to relinquish all expectations about life. The only surprise in solitude is death.

Bach was quarrelsome, litigious, self-serving, greedy for titles and honors, etc. So what! A musicologist listing the cantatas whose theme is death has remarked that no mortal ever had such a nostalgia for it. Which is all that counts. The rest has to do with biography.

Once my body gives me the slip, how, I wonder, with such carrion on my hands, will I combat the capitulation of my organs?

In order to conquer panic or some tenacious anxiety, there is nothing like imagining your own burial. An effective method, readily available to all. In order not to have to resort to it too often in the course of a day, best to experience its benefit straight off, when you get up. Or else use it only at exceptional moments, like Pope Innocent IX, who, having commissioned a painting in which he was shown on his deathbed, glanced at it each time he had to make some important decision.

naivete is the only road to salvation. But for those who feel and conceive life as a long agony, the question of salvation is a simple one. There is no salvation on their road.

Life is the privilege of mediocre people. Only mediocrities live at life's normal temperature; the others are consumed at temperatures at which life cannot endure, at which they can barely breathe, already one foot beyond life.