Pain reconciles one to existence. Infinite resignation is that shirt in the old fable. The thread is spun with tears, bleached by tears, the shirt sewn in tears, but then it also gives better protection than iron. The secret in life is that everyone must sew it for himself.

Whoever has the world's treasures has them no matter how he got them. In the world of the spirit it is otherwise.

He who does not know how to encircle a girl so that she loses sight of everything he does not want her to see, he who does not know how to poetize himself into a girl so that it is from her that everything proceeds as he wants it-he is and remains a bungler

To grumble about the world and its unhappiness is always easier than to beat one's breast and groan over oneself.

Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.

It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.

I have attacked no one as not being a Christian, I have condemned no one.