If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

Human judgment of human actions is true and void , that is to say, first true and then void.... The judgment of the word is true, the judgment in itself is void.... Only he who is a party can really judge, but as a party he cannot judge. Hence it follows that there is no possibility of judgment in the world, only a glimmer of it.

I made the remark that I don't avoid people in order to live quietly, but rather in order to be able to die quietly.

Ours is a lost generation, it may be, but it is more blameless than those earlier generations.

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

Leop­ards break in­to the tem­ple and drink all the sac­ri­fi­cial ves­sels dry; it keeps hap­pen­ing; in the end, it can be cal­cu­lat­ed in ad­vance and is in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the rit­ual.

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.