If, for example, you were to think more deeply about death, then it would be truly strange if, in so doing, you did not encounter new images.

Ask yourself whether our language is complete--whether it was so before the symbolism of chemistry and the notation of the infinitesimal calculus were incorporated in it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. (And how many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.

What is troubling us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within.

Suppose someone were to say: 'Imagine this butterfly exactly as it is, but ugly instead of beautiful'?!

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

I am still at Trattenbach, surrounded, as ever, by odiousness and baseness. I know that human beings on the average are not worth much anywhere, but here they are much more good-for-nothing and irresponsible than elsewhere.

Only let's cut out the transcendental twaddle when the whole thing is as plain as a sock on the jaw.