What is existence for but to be laughed at if men in their twenties have already attained the utmost?

For without risk there is no faith, and the greater the risk, the greater the faith.

Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work. Therefore, whenever I see a fly settling, in the decisive moment, on the nose of such a person of affairs; or if he is spattered with mud from a carriage which drives past him in still greater haste; or the drawbridge opens up before him; or a tile falls down and knocks him dead, then I laugh heartily.

Adversity not only draws people together, but brings forth that beautiful inward friendship.

There are two kinds of geniuses. The characteristic of the one is roaring, but the lightning is meagre and rarely strikes; the other kind is characterized by reflection by which it constrains itself or restrains the roaring. But the lightning is all the more intense; with the speed and sureness of lightning it hits the selected particular points - and is fatal.

I would have perished had I not perished.

God creates everything out of nothing. And everything which God is to use, he first reduces to nothing