Dread is a womanish debility in which freedom swoons. Psychologically speaking, the fall into sin always occurs in impotence. But dread is at the same time the most egotistic thing.

Men are not on such intimate terms with the sublime that they really can believe in it

My life is absolutely meaningless. When I consider the different periods into which it falls, it seems like the word Schnur in the dictionary, which means in the first place a string, in the second, a daughter-in-law. The only thing lacking is that the word Schnur should mean in the third place a camel, in the fourth, a dust-brush.

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

This age will die not as a result of some evil, but from a lack of passion.

On the whole, the longing for solitude is a sign that there still is spirit in a person and is a measure of what spirit there is.

Only one deception is possible in the infinite sense, self-deception.