Enlightenment consists not merely in the seeing of luminous shapes and visions, but in making the darkness visible. The latter procedure is more difficult and therefore, unpopular.

Every victory contains the germ of future defeat.

Words are animals, alive with a will of their own

Nothing affects the life of a child so much as the unlived life of its parent

A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.

The meaning and design of a problem seem not to lie in its solution, but in our working at it incessantly.

There is rarely a creative man who does not have to pay a high price for the divine spark of his greatest gifts... the human element is frequently bled for the benefit of the creative element and to such an extent that it even brings out the bad qualities, as for instance, ruthless, naive egoism (so-called "auto-eroticism"), vanity, all kinds of vices-and all this in order to bring to the human I at least some life-strength, since otherwise it would perish of sheer inanition.