Courtesy of Alberto Manguel

From his delightful and meandering book A Reading Diary: A Year of Favourite Books:

"Instead of saying, 'I seek the meaning of the world,' i.e., the superlative of all superlatives (and the very minute I pronounce the word, I have it, I achieve my purpose merely by having pronounced it), human philosophy has acted like the fool who would run through the streets in tears, looking for his own head on every street corner." — Ladislav Klima

"The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade all the other people how good they are. ... Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelley, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness." — Chesterton