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.

With respect to physical existence, one needs little, and to the degree that one needs less, the more perfect one is.

A man's personality is matured only when he appropriates the truth, whether it is spoken by Balaam's ass or a sniggering wag or an apostle or an angel.

Are you not aware that there comes a midnight hour when everyone must unmask...

Compared with the person who is conscious of his despair, the despairing individual who is ignorant of his despair is simply a negativity further away from the truth and deliverance. . . . Yet ignorance is so far from breaking the despair or changing despair to nondespairing that it can in fact be the most dangerous form of despair. . . . An individual is furthest from being conscious of himself as spirit when he is ignorant of being in despair. But precisely this-not to be conscious of oneself as spirit-is despair, which is spiritlessness. . . .

A man may perform astonishing feats and comprehend a vast amount of knowledge, and yet have no understanding of himself. But suffering directs a man to look within. If it succeeds, then there, within him, is the beginning of his learning.

I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night.