Power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare!

Perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

For what is man without desires, without free will, and without the power of choice but a stop in an organ pipe?

To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.

Human laziness makes people pigeonhole one another at first site so that they find nothing in common with one another.

"I love mankind," he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular."