Each man must have his own special route to lead him to God.

How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdash of books and paper blackened with ink!

What first truly stirred my soul was not fear or pain, nor was it pleasure or games; it was the yearning for freedom. I had to gain freedom-but from what, from whom? Little by little, in the course of time, I mounted freedom's rough unaccommodating ascent. To gain freedom first of all from the Turk, that was the initial step; after that, later, this new struggle began: to gain freedom from the inner Turk-from ignorance, malice and envy, from fear and laziness, from dazzling false ideas; and finally from idols, all of them, even the most revered and beloved.

Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model the longer the longer the tether of our slavery?

How simple and frugal a thing is happiness.

Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all … is not to have one.

I am a weak, ephemeral creature made of mud and dream. But I feel all the powers of the universe whirling within me.