You must go in quest of yourself, and you will find yourself again only in the simple and forgotten things.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

I studiously avoided all so-called "holy men." I did so because I had to make do with my own truth, not accept from others what I could not attain on my own. I would have felt it as a theft had I attempted to learn from the holy men and to accept their truth for myself. Neither in Europe can I make any borrowings from the East, but must shape my life out of myself-out of what my inner being tells me, or what nature brings to me.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

It is not for us . . . to send out missionaries to foreign peoples; it is our task to build up our own Western culture.

A collection of a hundred great brains makes one big fathead.

Nature seemed to me full of wonders, and I wanted to steep myself in them. Every stone, every plant, every single thing seemed alive and indescribably marvelous. I immersed myself in nature, crawled, as it were, into the very essence of nature and away from the whole human world.