Oh build your ship of death. Oh build it! For you will need it. For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.

I believe a man is born first unto himself - for the happy developing of himself, while the world is a nursery, and the pretty things are to be snatched for, and pleasant things tasted; some people seem to exist thus right to the end. But most are born again on entering manhood; then they are born to humanity, to a consciousness of all the laughing, and the never-ceasing murmur of pain and sorrow that comes from the terrible multitudes of brothers.

How the horse dominated the mind of the early races especially of the Mediterranean! You were a lord if you had a horse. Far back, far back in our dark soul the horse prances...The horse, the horse! The symbol of surging potency and power of movement, of action in man!

Be careful, then, and be gentle about death. For it is hard to die, it is difficult to go through the door, even when it opens.

That is almost the whole of Russian literature: the phenomenal coruscations of the souls of quite commonplace people.

God doesn't know things. He is things.

They wanted genuine intimacy, but they could not get even normally near to anyone, because they scorned to take the first steps, they scorned the triviality which forms common human intercourse.