Every dog has like me the impulse to question, and I have like every dog the impulse not to answer.

Utterance does not in principle mean a weakening of conviction--that would not be anything to be deplored--but a weakness of conviction.

The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. Only after death, only in solitude, does a man’s true nature emerge. In death, as on the chimney sweep’s Saturday night, the soot gets washed from his body.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

But eternity is not temporality at a standstill. What is oppressive about the concept of the eternal is the justification, incomprehensible to us, that time must undergo in eternity and the logical conclusion of that, the justification of ourselves as we are.

I am in chains. Don't touch my chains.

The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.