Life had stepped into the place of theory.

My friends, God is necessary for me if only because he is the one being who can be loved eternally.

I myself will perhaps cry out with all the rest, looking at the mother embracing her child's tormentor: 'Just art thou, O Lord!' but I do not want to cry out with them. While there's still time, I hasten to defend myself against it, and therefore I absolutely renounce all higher harmony. It is not worth one little tear of even that one tormented child who beat her chest with her little fist and prayed to 'dear God' in a stinking outhouse with her unredeemed tears!

You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won't be wiser?

If God does not exist, everything is permitted.

Neither man nor nation can exist without a sublime idea.

He who masters the grey everyday is a hero.