The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.

Life + a cat ... adds up to an incalculable sum.

Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings.

Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.

Children are still the way you were as a child, sad and happy in just the same way-and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children.

Everything in the world of things and animals is still filled with happening, which you can take part in.

Our task is to listen to the news that is always arriving out of silence.