In order to swim one takes off all one's clothes--in order to aspire to the truth one must undress in a far more inward sense, divest oneself of all one's inward clothes, of thoughts, conceptions, selfishness etc., before one is sufficiently naked.

Job endured everything - until his friends came to comfort him, then he grew impatient.

One could construe the life of man as a great discourse in which the various people represent different parts of speech (the same might apply to states).

I go fishing for a thousand monsters in the depths of my own self

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

What the philosophers have to say about reality is often as disappointing as a sign you see in a shop window, which reads Pressing Done Here. If you brought your clothes in to be pressed, you would be fooled: for the sign is only for sale.

To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.