Doubt is thought's despair; despair is personality's doubt. . . . Doubt and despair . . . belong to completely different spheres; different sides of the soul are set in motion. . . . Despair is an expression of the total personality, doubt only of thought.

The God that can be named is not God.

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

Christendom has done away with Christianity without being quite aware of it.

Christianity does not oppose debauchery and uncontrollable passions and the like as much as it opposes... flat mediocrity, this nauseating atmosphere, this homey, civil togetherness, where admittedly great crimes, wild excesses, and powerful aberrations cannot easily occur - but where God's unconditional demand has even greater difficulty in accomplishing what it requires: the majestic obedience of submission.

Take a chance and you may lose. Take not a chance and you have lost already.

The crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.