Where did I get it from? Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbour and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.

And once he had seen this, he could never again see it otherwise, just as we cannot reconstruct an illusion once it has been explained.

"A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist."

As long as there are slaughterhouses there will be battlefields. A vegetarian diet is the acid test of humanitarianism.

Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could, and until you've stopped loving the women you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothing...Otherwise all that's good and lofty in you will be lost.

I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.

It's hard to love a woman and do anything.