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“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.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism: The Essays

“Art, I suppose, is only for beginners, or else for those resolute dead-enders, who have made up their minds to be content with the ersatz of Suchness, with symbols rather than with what they signify, with the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner.”
― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

“The laugh left a bitter taste in our mouths, but we laughed out all the same.”
― Haruki Murakami

“Through many a long day you'll be taught
That what you once did without thinking,
As easy as if it were eating or drinking,
Must be done in order: one! two! three!
But truly, this though factory of ours
Is like some weaver's masterpiece:
One treadle stirs a thousand threads,
This way and that the shuttles whistle,
Threads flow invisibly, one ... Read morestroke
Ties a thousand knots .... The philosopher steps in
And proves to you it had to be so;
The first was so, the second was so,
And therefore the third and fourth were so.
If the first and second hadn't existed,
The third and fourth would never have existed.
And this is praised by every scholar,
But never a one becomes a weaver.
To know and describe a living thing
You first get rid of all its spirit:
Then the parts are all in the palm of your hand,
And all that you lack is the spirit that binds them!
Encheiresis naturae, chemists call it,
And fool themselves and never know it”
― Goethe