Quotes from Carlo Michelstaedter

One place is as good as another, in the valley without exit...

Life is all one long hard thing. He must have the courage to feel alone, to look his own pain in the face, bearing the entire weight of it.

Man 'knows', which is why he is always two : his life and his knowing.

Life is will-to-live, will is a lack, lack is pain, all life is pain.

You do not carry the cross. Instead you are all crucified on the timber of your sufficiency, which is given to you, the more you insist, the more you bleed: it suits you to say you carry the cross like a sacred duty, whereas you are heavy with the weight of your necessities. Have the courage not to admit those necessities and lift yourselves up for your own sakes.

If I am hungry,reality is nothing more to me than an ensemble of more or less edible things. If I am thirsty, reality is more or less liquid, and more or less potable. If I am sleepy, it is a great bed more or less hard.If I am not hungry, not thirsty, not sleepy, and do not need any other determinate thing, the world is a large ensemble of grays that are I don't know what but that certainly are not made to cheer me up.

Likewise, however little man, in living, demands as just to himself, his duty toward justice remains infinite. The right to live cannot be paid by finite labour, only by infinite activity. Because you participate in the violence of all things, all of this violence is part of your debt to justice. All of your activity must go toward eradicating this: to give everything and demand nothing; this is the duty—where duties and rights may be, I do not know.

Ahora bien, ¿qué es, oh Sócrates, la vida?, preguntaría yo.

Because their personal comfort is their reality, the calamity that interrupts it is a transcendent force: the devil.

vivid y disfrutad, que el tiempo apremia y se acerca la hora en que todo os será arrebatado!».

Persuasion lives not in him who does not live from his own self, who is son and father, slave and master of what lies around him, of what came before, of what must come after—a thing among things. Persuaded is he who has his life within himself, a soul naked amongst the islands of the blessed (Gorgias). But men look for 'life,' and lose 'life' (St. Matthew).

Io lo so che parlo perché parlo," (I know I am talking because I'm talking.)

In conclusion, the good can be made better; the bad remains bad.