Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to...

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

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

The guilt of newborns is immense.

The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings.

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.

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

Silently, God opens his golden eyes over the place of skulls.

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.