People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk.

Most people live dejectedly in worldly joys or sorrows. They sit on the sidelines and do not join the dance.

Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die.

Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner; put yourself in his place so that you may understand . . . what he learns and the way he understands it.

It goes against the grain for me to do what so often happens, to speak inhumanly about the great as if a few millennia were an immense distance. I prefer to speak humanly about it, as if it happened yesterday, and let only the greatness itself be the distance.