People who know a lot of the same things can hardly help talking about them.

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

Nothing less will shake a man — or at any rate a man like me — out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.

It matters enormously if I alienate anyone from the truth.

Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even agony into a glory

Love, having become a god, becomes a demon.

And the seriousness with which the other party takes my words always raises the doubt whether I have taken them seriously enough myself.