There will be but few people who, when at a loss for topics of conversation, will not reveal the more secret affairs of their friends.

Books that teach us to dance: There are writers who, by portraying the impossible as possible, and by speaking of morality and genius as if both were high-spirited freedom, as if man were rising up on tiptoe and simply had to dance out of inner pleasure.

There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.

Speaking generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of resistance.

Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.