Death cannot explain itself. The earnestness consists precisely in this, that the observer must explain it to himself.

To the frivolous Christianity is certainly not glad tidings, for it wishes first of all to make them serious.

Knowledge is an attitude, a passion, actually an illicit attitude. For the compulsion to know is like dipsomania, erotomania, and homicidal mania, in producing a character that is out of balance. It is not at all that the scientist goes after the truth.

Without risk, faith is an impossibility.

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.

All essential knowledge relates to existence, or only such knowledge as has an essential relationship to existence is essential knowledge.

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.