Don't you know that a midnight hour comes when everyone has to take off his mask? Do you think life always lets itself be trifled with? Do you think you can sneak off a little before midnight to escape this?

O Luther, you had 95 theses . . . The matter is far more terrible-there is only one thesis. The Christianity of the New Testament does not exist at all. Here there is nothing to reform.

Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.

Christ has not only spoken to us by his life but has also spoken for us by his death.

Are you not aware that there comes a midnight hour when everyone must unmask...

The object of (Christian) faith is not the teaching but the Teacher.

The minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion.

It is not where we breathe, but where we Love, that we live.

It is better to try something and fail than to try nothing and succeed. The result may be the same, but you won't be. We always grow more through defeats than victories.

It is not the path which is the difficulty; rather, it is the difficulty which is the path.

Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all. Love discovers truths about individuals that others cannot see

To be a woman is something so strange, so confusing and so complicated that only a woman could put up with it.

For without risk there is no faith, and the greater the risk, the greater the faith.

Most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, frightfully objective sometimes--but the task is precisely to be objective toward oneself and subjective toward all others.

A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized prayer is listening.

I found I had less and less to say, until finally, I became silent, and began to listen. I discovered in the silence, the voice of God

People settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness.

The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have.

It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.

Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.

There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life's highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.

One can advise comfortably from a safe port.

Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.

Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic if it is pulled out I shall die.

I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.

The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.

Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearences.

Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.

Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.

Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.

During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

Once you label me you negate me.

People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.

The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo; the more he can remember, the more divine his life becomes.

I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.

What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.

Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.

Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.