Father monks, why do you fast! Why do you expect reward in heaven for that?...No, saintly monk, you try being virtuous in the world, do good to society, without shutting yourself up in a monastery at other people's expense, and without expecting a reward up aloft for it--you'll find that a bit harder.

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us.

Even if we are occupied with important things and even if we attain honour or fall into misfortune, still let us remember how good it once was here, when we were all together united by a good and kind feeling which made us perhaps better than we are.

You must accept it as it is, and hence accept all consequences. A wall is indeed a wall.

If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself.

Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.