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.

Purity of heart is to will one thing.

Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.

If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.

Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.

The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.

Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.

Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.

Don't forget to love yourself.

Do not interrupt the flight of your soul; do not distress what is best in you; do not enfeeble your spirit with half wishes and half thoughts. Ask yourself and keep on asking until you find the answer, for one may have known something many times, acknowledged it; one may have willed something many times, attempted it - and yet, only the deep inner motion, only the heart's indescribable emotion, only that will convince you that what you have acknowledged belongs to you, that no power can take it from you - for only the truth that builds up is truth for you.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

Be that self which one truly is.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.

Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.

Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.