In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

Dread of night. Dread of not-night.

So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.

The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one’s striving.

Religions get lost as people do.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

The near stillness recalls what is forgotten, extinct angels.

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.

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

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

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

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

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.