Shuddering under the autumn stars, each year, the head sinks lower and lower.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.

The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.

Don Quixote’s misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering...

Black frost. The ground is hard, the air tastes bitter. Your stars cluster in evil signs.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.

There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in...

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.

Despair, night in the grieving senses.

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

The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.

By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.

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

Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

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.

When we are thirsty, we drink the white waters of the pool, the sweetness of our mournful childhood.

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.

The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual. That is why the revolutionary spiritual movements that declare all former things worthless are in the right, for nothing has yet happened.

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

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,...

Writers speak stench.

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.

Evil is whatever distracts.

Earlier lives drift by on silver soles, and the shadows of the damned descend into these sighing waters.

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

The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.

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

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself...

Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate… but with his other hand he can note down...

I drank the silence of God from a spring in the woods.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgement by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law.

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

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

For whoever is lonely there is a tavern.

The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.

My “fear” is my substance, and probably the best part of me.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.