There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.

Be that self which one truly is.

An individual in despair despairs over something. . . . In despairing over something, he really despair[s] over himself, and now he wants to get rid of himself. Consequently, to despair over something is still not despair proper. . . . To despair over oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself-this is the formula for all despair.

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox.

It is tragic-comic to see that all this knowledge and understanding exercises no power at all over men's lives, that their lives do not express in the remotest way what they have understood, but rather the opposite.

Any truth is only true up to a certain point. When one oversteps the mark, it becomes a non-truth.

The truth is lived before it is understood. It must be fought for, tested, and appropriated. Truth is the way... Anyone will easily understand it if he just gives himself to it.