nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.

I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of a tighrope dancer so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.

Man must strive, and striving he must err.

The deepest, the only theme of human history, compared to which all others are of subordinate importance, is the conflict of skepticism with faith.

In politics people throw themselves, as on a sickbed, from one side to the other in the belief they will lie more comfortably.

One is never satisfied with a portrait of persons whom one knows. That is why I have always pitied portraitists. One demands so seldom of others the impossible, but demands just that of the portraitists.

Freedom consists not in refusing to recognize anything above us, but in respecting something which is above us; for by respecting it, we raise ourselves to it, and, by our very acknowledgment, prove that we bear within ourselves what is higher, and are worthy to be on a level with it.