The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?

Almost from childhood, she knew that a concentration camp was nothing exceptional or startling but something very basic, a given into which we are born and from which we can escape only with the greatest of efforts, p. 137.

Não existe meio de verificar qual é a boa decisão, pois não existe termo de comparação. Tudo é vivido pela primeira vez e sem preparação. Como se um ator entrasse em cena sem nunca ter ensaiado. Mas o que pode valer a vida, se o primeiro ensaio da vida já é a própria vida?

Nous traversons le présent les yeux bandés (...) plus tard seulement , quand est dénoué le bandeau et que nous examinons le passé, nous nous rendons compte de ce que nous avons vécu et nous en comprenons le sens.

(...) the woman we love ought to swim as slowly as we do, she ought to have no past of her own to look back on happily. But when the illusion of absolute identity vanishes (the girl looks back happily on her past or swims faster), love becomes a permanent source of the great torment we call litost.

And what better consolation for a dying person than to say to himself: this land bores us? I can imagine those words in neon over the cemetery gates.

E qualcos'altro lo elevava: teneva sul tavolo un libro aperto. In quel bar nessuno aveva mai aperto un libro sul tavolo. Un libro era per Tereza il segno di riconoscimento di una fratellanza segreta. Contro il mondo della volgarità che la circondava, essa aveva infatti un’unica difesa: i libri che prendeva in prestito alla biblioteca comunale…

We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions - love, antipathy, charity, or malice - and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals.

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.