Suffering, Suicide and Immortality

“What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles. Hence if a man suddenly finds himself in an unusually happy position, it will in most cases result in his being sympathetic and kind. But if he has never been in any other than a happy position, or this becomes his permanent state, the effect of it is often just the contrary: it so far removes him from suffering that he is incapable of feeling any more sympathy with it. So it is that the poor often show themselves more ready to help than the rich.”

Suffering, Suicide and Immortality

“There is no doubt that many a man owes his good fortune in life solely to the circumstance that he has a pleasant way of smiling, and so wins the heart in his favor.  However, the heart would do better to be careful, and to remember what Hamlet put down in his tablets – that one may smile and smile and be a villain”.

Suffering, Suicide and Immortality

“Human nature is so constituted that we pay an attention to the opinion of other people which is out of all proportion to its value.”

Suffering, Suicide and Immortality

“When you say I, I, I want to exist, it is not you alone that says this.  Everything says it, absolutely everything that has the faintest trace of consciousness.  It follows, then, that this desire of yours is just the part of you that is not individual – the part that is common to all things without distinction.  It is the cry, not of the individual, but of existence itself; it is the intrinsic element in everything that exists, nay it is the cause of anything existing at all.”

Suffering, Suicide and Immortality

“Transcendental knowledge is knowledge which passes beyond the bounds of possible experience, and strives to determine the nature of things as they are in themselves.  Immanent knowledge, on the other hand, is knowledge which confines itself entirely within those bounds; so that it cannot apply to anything but actual phenomena.”

Suffering, Suicide and Immortality

“It will be generally found that, as soon as the terrors of life reach the point at which they outweigh the terrors of death, a man will put an end to his life – but the terrors of death offer considerable resistance.”  

Suffering, Suicide and Immortality

“They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice, that only a madman could be guilty of it and other insipidities of the same kind, or else they make the nonsensical remark that suicide is wrong when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.”

Suffering, Suicide and Immortality

“Human life must be some kind of mistake.  The truth of this will be sufficiently obvious if we only remember that man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy; and that even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but abandonment to boredom.  This is direct proof that existence has no real value in itself; for what is boredom but the feeling of the emptiness of life?  If life – the craving for which is the very essence of our being – were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.” 

Suffering, Suicide and Immortality

“The whole foundation on which our existence rests is the present – the ever-fleeting present.  It lies, then, in the very nature of our existence to take the form of constant motion, and to offer no possibility of our ever attaining the rest for which we are always striving.  We are like a man running downhill, who cannot keep on his legs unless he runs on, and will inevitably fall if he stops; or, again, like a pole balanced on the tip of one’s finger; or like a planet, which would fall into the sun the moment it ceased to hurry forward on its way.  Unrest is the mark of existence.”

Suffering, Suicide and Immortality

“The conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another. Nay, from this point of view, we might well consider the proper form of address to be, not Monsieur, Sir, mein Herr, but my fellow-sufferer, Soĉi malorum, compagnon de miséres! This may perhaps sound strange, but it is in keeping with the facts; it puts others in a right light; and it reminds us of that which is after all the most necessary thing in life – the tolerance, patience, regard, and love of neighbor, of which everyone stands in need, and which, therefore, every man owes to his fellow.”