To be ashamed of one's immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one's morality.

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?

When I contemplated purpose I also contemplated chance and foolishness.

Sometimes in conversation the sound of our own voice distracts us and misleads us into making assertions that in no way express our true opinions.

Whatever a theologian regards as true must be false: there you have almost a criterion of truth.

The wheel and the brake have different duties, but also one in common: to hurt one another.

What is happening to me happens to all fruits that grow ripe. It is the honey in my veins that makes my blood thicker, and my soul quieter.