May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

Books are a narcotic.

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.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

If education tries to make other persons out of us than we essentially are, deeper inside, it stultifies, and reproach matters.