“Vague a l'ame — melancholy yearning for the end of the world.”

“All of us yearn for the highest wisdom, but we have to rely on ourselves in the end.”

“Much melancholy has devolved upon mankind, and it is detestable to me that might will triumph in the end … Art must not serve might.”

“The world awakens on the run
And will soon be earning
With hopes of better days to come
It's a morning yearning.”

“"Put an end to war?" say the watchers. — "Forbid the Storm!"
Cleansed from the passions of party and faction, liberated from prejudice and infatuation and the tyranny of tradition, these watchers on the threshold of another world are vaguely conscious of the simplicity of the present and the yawning possibilities of the future.”

“Under the pressure of a war to the death, all that was best, all that was most human and gentle on each side was crushed out by military necessity. On the one side, the passion for a unified world, where every individual should live a free and full life in service of the world community, was overcome by the passion to punish spies, traitors, and heretics. On the other, vague and sadly misguided yearnings for a nobler, less materialistic life were cleverly transformed by the reactionary leaders into vindictiveness against the revolutionaries.”

“The refutation of suicide: is it not inelegant to abandon a world which has so willingly put itself at the service of our melancholy?”

“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”

“The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise for the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.”

“The principle that the end justifies the means is and remains the only rule of political ethics; anything else is just a vague chatter and melts away between one’s fingers.”