At the beginning of a marriage ask yourself whether this woman will be interesting to talk to from now until old age. Everything else in marriage is transitory: most of the time is spent in conversation.

It is with artworks as it is with wine: it is much better when we do not need either one, when we stick with water, and when out of our own inner fire, the inner sweetness of our own soul, we turn the water over and over again into wine ourselves.

That is the most extreme form of nihilism: nothingness (the "meaningless") eternally!

One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is the whole - there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole...But nothing exists apart from the whole!

In true love it is the soul that envelops the body.

Along the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation is chosen and entered upon as a means to a purpose but is ultimately continued as a final purpose in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent stupidity in which we indulge ourselves.

Sins are indispensable to every society organized on an ecclesiastical basis; they are the only reliable weapons of power; the priest lives upon sins; it is necessary to him that there be sinning.