When you were called, did you answer or did you not? Perhaps softly and in a whisper?

And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.

The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted.

Without risk, faith is an impossibility.

For love is exultant when it unites equals, but it is triumphant when it makes that which was unequal equal in love.

No one may pride himself at being more than an individual, and no one despondently think that he is not an individual.