We die all the time to avoid being killed.

[Nature] only keeps us alive by a complicated system of the most shameful illusions, falsifying beyond rectification life, death, and after-death. Having made us take part in this poor puzzling game of life, she has taken care that all the rules shall be unfavourable to us: the cards are marked, the dice are loaded, we are always swindled. Thus years of hard work; and self-denial are frequently lost by a slip or chance, but seldom or never saved by a chance. Our health may be ruined by a pin-prick, but never doubled by an accident. We fall seriously ill in a moment, and take weeks or months to recover; lose a limb by some sudden mishap, but never by a good hap regain it. We cannot reach even a low degree of wisdom or knowledge without long hard study, while to be ignorant and foolish is the easiest and most natural thing in the world for us. Our sorrows are real and enduring; our joys deceptive and transient; our prizes of victory are not to be compared with our forfeits of defeat.

What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

I think we are all hopelessly flawed.

The thought of death deceives us; for it causes us to neglect to live.

Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.

"exclaimed, "O foolish creatures that we are, for the sake of a little pleasure we have destroyed ourselves.

The one thing our species is helpless against is good fortune. It first puzzles, then frightens, then angers, and finally destroys us.

The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions - none more so than the most capable.

Every Arrabin desperately asserts his individuality, with personal tricks and fads. A futile kind of life, no doubt, but isn’t all life futile?

Life is futile unless it be directed towards a definite goal.

why shouldnt things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? they are so, and we are so, and they and we go together.

Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility.

Our existence is nearly a biological impossibility.