To be here is immense.

Don't take my devils away, because my angels may flee too.

If no one else, the dying must notice how unreal, how full of pretense, is all that we accomplish here, where nothing is allowed to be itself.

The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of.

There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several.

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'hierarchies? and even if one of thempressed me against his heart: I would be consumedin that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothingbut the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,and we are so awed because it serenely disdainsto annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.

If the Angel deigns to appear, it will be because you have convinced him, not by tears but by your humble resolve to be always beginning — to be a Beginner!