My formula for happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.

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.

you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?

Since Copernicus, man seems to have got himself on an inclined plane-now he is slipping faster and faster away from the center into-what? into nothingness? into a 'penetrating sense of his nothingness?' ... all science, natural as well as unnatural-which is what I call the self-critique of knowledge-has at present the object of dissuading man from his former respect for himself, as if this had been but a piece of bizarre conceit.

In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness with what is strange.

What good is a book that does not even transport us beyond all books?

In the stream.- Mighty waters draw much stone and rubble along with them; mighty spirits many stupid and bewildered heads.