The task is not to overcome opponents in general but only those opponents against whom one has to summon all one's strength, one's skill and one's swordsmanship-in fact to master opponents who are one's equals.

Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.

I go in solitude, so as not to drink out of everybody's cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think; after a time it always seems as if they want to banish myself from myself and rob me of my soul.

Woman learns how to hate in proportion as she forgets how to charm.

We cannot even reproduce our thoughts entirely in words.

Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.

... art approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing. She alone knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live.