The world is a cruel place, Petrosinella, and it wounds the weak.

You are very harsh.''I have seen the world.

Romance is finding your fantasy in people who don't have it.

I'm too old to know everything

[S]omehow, without his being aware of it, time had coated his awe with a rind of disillusionment, and the wine of wonder had turned to vinegar.

We dream, we wake on a cold hillside, we pursue the dream again. In the beginning was the dream, and the work of disenchantment never ends.

He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.

All knowledge hurts.

Our bitterest wine is always drained from crushed ideals.

The flowers of life are but illusions. How many fade away and leave no trace; how few yield any fruit; and the fruit itself, how rarely does it ripen!

Once I thought that Lake Forest was the most glamorous place in the world. Maybe it was.

Disillusion can become itself an illusion If we rest in it.

Not merely the idols fell, but also the habit of faith.

Hope is the only good thing that disillusion respects.

The proof that a philosopher does not know what he is talking about is apt to sadden his followers before it reacts on himself.