Freedom is not choosing; that is merely the move that we make when all is already lost. Freedom is knowing and understanding and respecting things quite other than ourselves.

... he felt himself to be one of them, who can live neither in the world nor out of it. They are a kind of sick people, whose desire for God makes them unsatisfactory citizens of an ordinary life, but whose strength or temperament fails them to surrender the world completely; and present-day society, with its hurried pace and its mechanical and technical structure, offers no home to these unhappy souls.

The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.

Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!

Not to have been born is undoubtedly best, but sound sleep is second best.

The notion that one can liberate another soul from captivity is an illusion of the very young.

My heart was beating like an army on the march.