How much truth can a spirit bear, how much truth can a spirit dare? ... that became for me more and more the real measure of value.

Whoever has witnessed another's ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.

We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.

If you have an enemy, do not requite him evil with good, for that would put him to shame. Rather prove that he did you some good.

The same passions in man and woman nonetheless differ in tempo; hence man and woman do not cease misunderstanding one another.

Men have hitherto treated women like birds which have strayed down to them from the heights; as something more delicate, more fragile, more savage, stranger, sweeter, soulful--but as something which has to be caged up so that it shall not fly away.

When somebody dies we usually need reasons for consolation, not so much to alleviate our pain as to excuse ourselves for so readily feeling consoled.