...the reason for [this age's] anxiety and unrest is because in one direction, 'truth' increases in scope and quantity - via science and technology - while in the other, certainty and confidence steadily decline. Our age is a master in developing truths while being wholly indifferent to certitude. It lacks confidence in the good.

Irony is the cultivation of the spirit and therefore follows next after immediacy; then comes the ethicist, then the humourist, then the religious person.

On the whole, the longing for solitude is a sign that there still is spirit in a person and is a measure of what spirit there is.

What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?

No one is so terribly deceived as he who does not himself suspect it.

It takes moral courage to grieve; it requires religious courage to rejoice.

I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away - yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.