The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

Life is — or has — both meaning and meaninglessness. I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will preponderate and win the battle.

Whoever looks into the mirror of the water will see first of all his own face. Whoever goes to himself risks a confrontation with himself.

What I am looking for is neither the real nor the unreal, but the mystery of the instinct of the human race.

-- Amedeo Modigliani

It is not I who conform to the stars; the stars conform to me.

-- Plotinus

Fate is a natural order of all things, following one upon another from eternity, and their intertwining is inviolable.

-- Chrysippus of Soli

Character is destiny.

-- Heraclitus

Courage begins the difficult deed, but fortune governs its outcome.

-- Democritus

I will seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly never wholly overcome me.

-- Ludwig van Beethoven