The discipline of suffering, of great suffering- do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far? That tension of the soul in unhappiness which cultivates its strength, its shudders face to face with great ruin, its inventiveness and courage in enduring, preserving, interpreting, and exploiting suffering, and whatever has been granted to it of profundity, secret, mask, spirit, cunning, greatness- was it not granted to it through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?

That lies should be necessary to life is part and parcel of the terrible and questionable character of existence.

At a certain place in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards.

The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow.

My idea of paradise is a straight line to goal

When a man is in love he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything.

Man, a hybrid of plant and ghost.