In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go.

Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.

It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.

Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read? So that it shall make us happy? Good God, we should also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves; like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.