Conversation with a friend will only bear good fruit of knowledge when both think only of the matter under consideration and forget that they are friends.

The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man.

Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.

one does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.

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.

What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.

The ability to suffer is a small matter - weak women and even slaves can acheive virtuosity in that.