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There have been times in my life that I've had a ton of vices, and my demons have run amok for years and years and years.

The problem of evil, that is to say the reconciling of our failures, even the purely physical ones, with creative goodness and creative power, will always remain one of the most disturbing mysteries of the universe for both our hearts and our minds.

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

There is the natural tendency that all of us are vulnerable to, to deny unpleasant realities and to look for any excuse to push them away and resolve to think about them another day long in the future.

The numerous evils to which individual persons are exposed are due to the defects existing in the persons themselves. We complain and seek relief from our own faults; we suffer from the evils which we, by our own free will, inflict on ourselves and ascribe them to God, who is far from being connected with them!

Life and death are illusions. We are in a constant state of transformation.

Reality is never as bad as a nightmare, as the mental tortures we inflict on ourselves.

So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time to improve our imaginary virtues. The truth is we only perfect our vices, and man is a worse creature when he dies than he was when he was born.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life.