You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.

It is a pity that you students aren't fully aware of the luxury and abundance in which you live.

All higher humor begins with ceasing to take oneself seriously.

Every phenomenon on earth is symbolic, and each symbol is an open gate through which the soul, if it is ready, can enter into the inner part of the world, where you and I and day and night are all one.

When we hate a person, what we hate in his image is something inside ourselves. Whatever isn't inside us can't excite us.

I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.

All interpretation, all psychology, all attempts to make things comprehensible, require the medium of theories, mythologies, and lies.