My happiest moments are those when I think nothing, want nothing, and dream nothing, being lost in a torpor like some accidental plant, like mere moss growing on life’s surface. I savour without bitterness this absurd awareness of being nothing, this foretaste of death and extinction.

Seeing and hearing are the only noble things in life. The other senses are plebeian and carnal. The only aristocracy is never to touch. Avoid getting close – that’s true nobility.

Peace at least. All that was dross and residue vanishes from my soul as if it had never been. I'm alone and calm. It's like the moment when I could theoretically convert to a religion. But although I'm no longer attracted to anything down here, I'm also not attracted to anything up above. I feel free, as if I'd ceased to exist and were conscious of that fact.

My happiest moments are those when I think nothing, want nothing, and dream nothing, being lost in a torpor like some accidental plant, like mere moss growing on life's surface. I savour without bitterness this absurd awareness of being nothing, this foretaste of death and extinction.

How can I possess with my body, when I don't even possess my body? How can I possess with my soul, when I don't possess my soul? How can I understand with my mind, when I don't understand my mind? There is no body or truth we possess, nor even any illusion. We are phantoms made of lies, shadows of illusions, and our life is hollow on both the outside and the inside.

I loathe the happiness of all these people who don't know they're unhappy.

Remain pure, not in order to be noble or strong but to be yourself. To give your love is to lose love.Abdicate from life so as not to abdicate from yourself.

Seeing and hearing are the only noble things in life. The other senses are plebeian and carnal. The only aristocracy is never to touch. Avoid getting close – that's true nobility.

Let's not even touch life with the tips of our fingers.Let's not even know the love in our minds.May we never know the feel of a women's kiss, not even in our dreams.

The gods grant nothing more than life,So let us reject whatever lifts us To unbreathable heights, Eternal but flowerless.