A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.

The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.

Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.

There are two cardinal human sins out of which all others derive, deviate, and dissipate: impatience and lassitude (or perhaps nonchalance). On account of impatience they are driven out of paradise; on account of lassitude or nonchalance they do not return. Perhaps, however, only one main sense of sin is given: impatience. On account of impatience they are driven out, on account of impatience they do not turn back.

There sat I, a faded being, under faded leaves.

The man in ecstasy and the man drowning: both raise their arms.