Quick, Survive!

The first person to whom Karl was introduced one morning was a slender, incredibly supple young man, whom Uncle Jacob brought into the room with a string of fulsome compliments. He was obviously one of these many millionaires' sons who are regarded as failures by their parents' standards and who lead strenuous lives which an ordinary man could scarcely endure for a single average day without breaking down. And as if he knew or divined this and faced it as best he could, there was always about his lips and eyes an unchanging smile of happiness, which seemed to embrace himself, anyone he was speaking to and the whole world.
— Franz Kafka, Amerika, p. 43.

"He who despises himself esteems himself as a self-despiser."
— Susan Sontag, Death Kit, p. 8.

One improves on the new by returning to the old.
— Susan Sontag, Ibid., p. 10.

A natural, self-protective reaction: for the relatively sane to fear the mentally damaged.
— Susan Sontag, Ibid., p. 93.

     Think of Hestor [blinded by his mother], only setting aside what he can merely guess at, never estimate: how much she suffers from the usual pathology of survivors. Feeling always, somewhere, that they too should have perished. To survive is to be guilty. Because unpunished.
     Someone who survives his death sentence through accident, last-minute rescue, or mere luck rather than through his own strenuous efforts knows that, really, he should be dead. Knows that he has no true title to his life. He cannot be identical with his life when, after being on the threshold of death and even resigned to it, his life is incoherently and arbitrarily and at the last minute returned to him. However unjust the verdict which sought to deprive him of his life, it has in retrospect more meaning and coherence than his survival. To live, therefore, is to remain convicted  and under sentence. but to have evaded, somehow, the execution of the sentence. To be alive, then, is chiefly a negative condition. Judged, one has escaped judgment. Sentenced, one remains mysteriously unpunished.
— Susan Sontag, Ibid., p. 205.

     By temperament I was the kind of person that does things. Does them, and reflects afterward. So I started for the Amazon without reflecting and without asking any questions. That was more than fifty years ago. In all that time my temperament has not changed, by even a shade. I have been punished many and many a time, and bitterly, for doing things and reflecting afterward, but these tortures have been of no value to me: I still do the thing commanded by Circumstance and Temperament, and reflect afterward. Always violently. When I am reflecting, on these occasions, even deaf persons can hear me think.
— Mark Twain, What Is Man?, from "Turning-Point of My Life," pp. 134-135.

     Many people have argued that they see no need for a logical justification of any procedure which works, and that pragmatism is the best guide. They say that sceptics should certainly act as watchdogs, but scepticism should not bar us from making experiments and formulating theories. If empirical generalisations and theories provide a better understanding and linkage of phenomena, and in addition permit numerous predictions, then we are certainly better off with theories than without them, irrespective of whether we can provide 'justifications' for the methods of generalisation. Perhaps some sceptics feel that unless they can logically 'justify' a particular choice of methods for obtaining empirical generalisations or hypotheses of theories, they are no better off than a believer in orthodox religion who also cannot justify his belief. However, I suspect that few people would dispute that despite their ultimate lack of 'logical justification' the insights offered by electromagnetic theory, quantum mechanics, molecular biology, and other scientific achievements, are different from metaphysical religious pronouncements. The fact that two different realms of belief are beset with uncertainties does not mean that their uncertain insights are of comparable kinds. The irremovable uncertainties of the foundations of science can only give displeasure to people who look upon science as a substitute for religion, in the misguided hope that science, in contrast to religion, offers doubtless certainty. In reality both scientific and religious people are believers, though of a different kind.
— Gerhard D. Wassermann, Brains and Reasoning, p. 75.