It is only great pain--that slow, sustained pain that takes its time, in which we are, as it were, burned with smoldering green firewood--that forces us philosophers to sink to our ultimate profundity and to do away with all the trust, everything good-natured, veil-imposing, mild and middling, on which we may have previously based our humanity. I doubt that such a pain makes us 'better'--but I know that it makes us deeper.

Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence.

The object of convalescence ought to be to turn our attention to life: at other times, simply to our tasks!

A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at five or six great men- yes, and then to get around them.

"What is good?" ye ask. To be brave is good. Let the little girls say: "To be good is what is pretty, and at the same time touching."

Of all writings I love only that which is written with blood. Write with blood: and you will discover that blood is spirit.

I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.