Most people believe that the Christian commandments are intentionally a little too severe – like setting a clock half an hour ahead to make sure of not being late in the morning.
Truth is not introduced into the individual from without but was within him all the time.
Adversity not only draws people together but brings forth that beautiful inward friendship.
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
The conclusions of passion are the only reliable ones.
People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have for example freedom of thought instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.
Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.
The tyrant dies and his rule is over the martyr dies and his rule begins.
Prayer does not change God but it changes him who prays.
To stand on one leg and prove God’s existence is a very different thing from going down on one’s knees and thanking him.
Teach me O God not to torture myself not to make a martyr out of myself through stifling reflection but rather teach me to breathe deeply in faith.
Most people believe that the Christian commandments are intentionally a little too severe – like setting a clock half an hour ahead to make sure of not being late in the morning.
Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forward.
Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.
Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.
There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life’s highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.
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.
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.
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.
Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.
Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.
Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.
The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.
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.
Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.
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.
Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.
It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.