Isn’t it only natural to leave a place where one is so bitterly hated?…The heroism involved in staying put in spite of it all is the heroism of a cockroach, which also won’t be driven...

Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.

Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one’s ears and listens, say in the...

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within...

Please — consider me a dream.

People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as ‘nauseatingly miserable beyond repair’.

It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.

We are separated from God on two sides; the Fall separates us from Him, the Tree of Life separates Him from us.

We are sinful not merely because we have eaten of the tree of knowledge, but also because we have not eaten of the tree of life.

Guilt is never to be doubted.

I only fear danger where I want to fear it.

Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment.

If something good has lost its way into you, it will make its escape overnight. I know you.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

Leopards break into the temple and drink the sacrificial chalices dry; this occurs repeatedly, again and again; finally it can be reckoned upon beforehand and becomes part of the ceremony

Dread of night. Dread of not-night.

Kill me, or you are a murderer.

Hombro con hombro, una cadena de hermanos, una sangre no ya encerrada en la mezquina circulación del cuerpo, sino circulando con una dulzura y sin embargo regresando sin fin a través de China.

Der Sinn für die Darstellung meines traumhaften innern Lebens hat alles andere ins Nebensächliche gerückt, und es ist in einer schrecklichen Weise verkümmert und hört nicht auf, zu verkümmern. Nichts anderes kann mich jemals zufriedenstellen.

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.

Isn ‘ t it obvious that a person would leave from where he is hated so much? The heroism of staying in such a place is that of a roach which won ‘ t be...

Religions get lost as people do.

We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.

Evil is the starry sky of the Good.

I felt so weak and unhappy that I buried my face in the ground: I could not bear the strain of seeing around me the things of the earth. I felt convinced that every movement...

He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful,...

Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you anymore

One hears a great many things, true, but can gather nothing definite.

If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without ascending it, the work would have been permitted.

The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could...

The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when...

Hesitation before birth. If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers is contained in the dog

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

One of the first signs of the beginnings of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved...

The existence of the writer is an argument against the existence of the soul, for the soul has obviously taken flight from the real ego, but not improved itself, only become a writer.

Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

This inescapable duty to observe oneself: if someone else is observing me, naturally I have to observe myself too; if none observe me, I have to observe myself all the closer

The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.

Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.

At the same time all the houses round about promptly took part in this silence, and so did the darkness above them, reaching as far as the stars. And the footsteps of invisible passers-by, whose...

I believe that we should only read those books that bite and sting us. If a book does not rouse us with a blow then why read it?

It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.

It’s often safer to be in chains than to be free

Evil is whatever distracts.