Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
A ‘no’ does not hide anything, but a ‘yes’ very easily becomes a deception.
If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.
The stone that was rolled before Christ’s tomb might appropriately be called the philosopher’s stone because its removal gave not only the pharisees but, now for 1800 years, the philosophers so much to think about.
What is existence for but to be laughed at if men in their twenties have already attained the utmost?
For I have trained myself and am training myself always to be able to dance lightly in the service of thought
No woman in maternity confinement can have stranger and more impatient wishes than I have.
The most common form of despair is not being who you are.
The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.
The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.
For he who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God.
In relationship to God one can not involve himself to a certain degree. God is precisely the contradiction to all that is ‘to a certain degree’.
People settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness.
Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die.
What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement.
Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in everygeneration may not come that far, but none comes further.
to have faith is precisely to lose one’s mind so as to win God.
Faith is a marvel, and yet no human being is excluded from it; for that in which all human life is united is passion, and faith is a passion.
The more he needs God, the more deeply he comprehends he is in need of God, and then the more he in his need presses forward to God, the more perfect he is… To need God is nothing to be ashamed of but is perfection itself.
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.
Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life’s relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.
The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.
When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love.
It costs a man just as much or even more to go to hell than to come to heaven. Narrow, exceedingly narrow is the way to perdition!
It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
Every mental act is composed of doubt and belief,but it is belief that is the positive, it is beliefthat sustains thought and holds the world together.
For with his little secret that he cannot divulge, the poet buys this power of the word to tell everybody else’s dark secrets. A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.
In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant… My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known — no wonder, then, that I return the love.
Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.
I have walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.
The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. – is sure to be noticed.
To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self…. And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one’s self.
With every increase in the degree of consciousness, and in proportion to that increase, the intensity of despair increases: the more consciousness the more intense the despair
With every increase in the degree of consciousness, and in proportion to that increase, the intensity of despair increases: the more consciousness the more intense the despair.
Satan’s despair is absolute because Satan, as pure spirit, is pure consciousness, and for Satan (and all men in his predicament) every increase in consciousness is an increase in despair.
Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself!
He who loved himself became great in himself, and he who loved others became great through his devotion, but he who loved God became greater than all.
Every individual, however original he may be, is still a child of God, of his age, of his nation, of his family and friends. Only thus is he truly himself. If in all this relativity he tries to be the absolute, then he becomes ridiculous.
I have walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it…but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill.
Shows itself in the notion that what may be objectively true may in the mouth of certain people become false.
Come, sleep and death; you promise nothing, you hold everything.
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.
It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence.
The reward of the good man is to be allowed to worship in truth.
Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy’s favor, offering to sell her charms to it.
The profundity of Christianity is that Christ is both our redeemer and our judge, not that one is our redeemer and another is our judge, for then we certainly come under judgement, but that the redeemer and the judge are the same.
For love is exultant when it unites equals, but it is triumphant when it makes that which was unequal equal in love.
I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.
As the ironist does not have the new within his power, it might be asked how he destroys the old, and to this it must be answered: he destroys the given actuality by the given actuality itself.
Many of us pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that we hurry past it.
If this had not been the case with Abraham, then perhaps he might have loved God but notbelieved; for he who loves God without faith reflects upon himself, he who loves God believingly reflects upon God.
Battle day and night against the guile of oblivion…
To stand on one leg and prove God’s existence is a very different thing from going on one’s knees and thanking Him.
What a difference! Under the esthetic sky, everything is buoyant, beautiful, transient! when ethics arrives on the scene, everything becomes harsh, angular and infinitely boring
[The writer] can easily foresee his fate … in an age when an author who wants to have readers must take care to write in such a way that the book can easily be perused during an afternoon nap ….
With the daguerreotype everyone will be able to have their portrait taken—formerly it was only the prominent—and at the same time everything is being done to make us all look exactly the same, so we shall only need one portrait.
My opinion is, of course, completely my own. I would not impose it on anyone else and decline any pressure to change it.