Truths may clash without contradicting each other.

We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.

Freedom and constraint are two aspects of the same necessity, which is to be what one is and no other.

And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure . . . And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, 'Yes, the stars always make me laugh!' And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you.

We must not subject him who creates to the desires of the multitude. It is, rather, his creation that must become the multitude's desire.

Treason implies responsibility for something, control over something, influence upon something, knowledge of something. Treason in our time is a proof of genius. Why, I want to know, are not traitors decorated?

The flower you single out is a rejection of all other flowers; nevertheless, only on these terms is it beautiful.