All higher humor begins with ceasing to take oneself seriously.

...and the vessel was not full, his intellect was not satisfied, his soul was not at peace, his heart was not still.

...Every ego so far from being a unity is in the highest degree a manifold world, a constellated heaven, a chaos of forms, of states and stages, of inheritances and potentialities. It appears to be a necessity as imperative as eating and breathing for everyone to be forced to regard this chaos as a unity and to speak of his ego as though is was a one-fold and clearly detached and fixed phenomenon. Even the best of us shares this delusion.

Friendship is identification and difference

Love of God is not always the same as love of good.

Oh, if I had had a friend at this moment, a friend in an attic room, dreaming by candlelight and with a violin lying ready at his hand! How I should have slipped up to him in his quiet hour, noiselessly climbing the winding stair to take him by surprise, and then with talk and music we should have held heavenly festival throughout the night!

In fear I hurried this way and that. I had the taste of blood and chocolate in my mouth, the one as hateful as the other.