In my great melancholy, I loved life, for I love my melancholy.

O Luther, you had 95 theses . . . The matter is far more terrible-there is only one thesis. The Christianity of the New Testament does not exist at all. Here there is nothing to reform.

The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply, 'Create silence'.

Had I to carve an inscription on my tombstone I would ask for none other than "The Individual."

As I stood alone and forsaken, and the power of the sea and the battle of the elements reminded me of my own nothingness, and on the other hand, the sure flight of the birds recalled the words spoken by Christ: Not a sparrow shall fall on the ground without your Father: then, all at once, I felt how great and how small I was; then did those two mighty forces, pride and humility, happily unite in friendship.

Out of love, God becomes man. He says: 'See, here is what it is to be a human being'.

Certainty... lurks at the door of faith and threatens to devour it.