Knowledge is an attitude, a passion, actually an illicit attitude. For the compulsion to know is like dipsomania, erotomania, and homicidal mania, in producing a character that is out of balance. It is not at all that the scientist goes after the truth.

...the greatest thing each person can do is to give himself to God utterly and unconditionally - weaknesses, fears, and all. For God loves obedience more than good intentions or second-best offerings, which are all too often made under the guise of weakness.

Why I so much prefer autumn to spring is that in the autumn one looks at heaven--in the spring at the earth.

Irony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and thereby yields truth, actuality, content; it disciplines and punishes and thereby yields balance and consistency.

The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.

If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.

Death cannot explain itself. The earnestness consists precisely in this, that the observer must explain it to himself.