"..." 3

A student in a mood of deep depression, for which he felt that Wittgenstein's philosophy was in some way responsible, went to Wittgenstein and explained: "Life seems to me pretty pointless and futile. In a few years I shall have ceased to exist. And it's no consolation that human life will go on. It may be millions of years yet, but in time the sun will cool down, life will become extinct, and it will all be as if life had never been." Wittgenstein replied: "Suppose you were sitting in a room, facing a door which is completely black, and saying to yourself sombrely over and over again, 'That door is black! That door is black!' After a bit you could easily begin to feel miserable about it, and to feel that it was the blackness of the door that was the melancholy fact which had produced your gloom."

—From "Wittgenstein as a Teacher" by D. A. T. Gasking and A. C. Jackson in Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Man and His Philosophy

2/16 update:

"Life is a message scribbled in the dark."