You should therefore say: alone in one's boat, alone with one's care, alone with one's despair, which one is craven enough to want rather to keep than submit to the pain of being healed.

This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love.

Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life.

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk.

For he who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God in faith reflects on God.

Christianity does not oppose debauchery and uncontrollable passions and the like as much as it opposes... flat mediocrity, this nauseating atmosphere, this homey, civil togetherness, where admittedly great crimes, wild excesses, and powerful aberrations cannot easily occur - but where God's unconditional demand has even greater difficulty in accomplishing what it requires: the majestic obedience of submission.

One should be an enigma not just to others but to oneself too. I study myself. When I'm tired of that I light a cigar to pass the time, and think: God only knows what the good Lord really meant with me, or what He meant to make of me.