Every woman while she would be ready to die of shame if surprised in the act of generation, nonetheless carries her pregnancy without a trace of shame and indeed with a kind of pride. The reason is that pregnancy is in a certain sense a cancellation of the guilt incurred by coitus; thus coitus bears all the shame and disgrace of the affair, while pregnancy, which is so intimately associated with it, stays pure and innocent and is indeed to some extent sacred.

To truth only a brief celebration of victory is allowed between the two long periods during which it is condemned as paradoxical, or disparaged as trivial.

For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it.

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

Astrology furnishes a splendid proof of the contemptible subjectivity of men in consequence whereof they refer everything to themselves and from every idea at once go straight back to themselves. Astrology refers the course of celestial bodies to the miserable ego; it also establishes a connection between the comets in heaven and the squabbles and rascalities on earth.

Each day is a little life.

Something of great importance now past is inferior to something of little importance now present, in that the latter is a reality, and related to the former as something to nothing.