To grumble about the world and its unhappiness is always easier than to beat one's breast and groan over oneself.

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox.

Backwards understood be only can but, forwards lived be must life.

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.

Certainty... lurks at the door of faith and threatens to devour it.