Justice. To be ever ready to admit that another person is something quite different from what we read when he is there (or when we think about him). Or rather, to read in him that he is certainly something different, perhaps something completely different from what we read in him. Every being cries out silently to be read differently.

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.

The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.

If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.

Friendship is a miracle by which a person consents to view from a certain distance, without coming any nearer, the very being who is as necessary to him as food.

Why is it that reality, when set down untransposed in a book, sounds false?