Your own tactic is to train yourself in the art of becoming enigmatic to everybody. My young friend, suppose there was no one who troubld himself to guess your riddle--what joy, then, would you have in it?

Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.

With respect to physical existence, one needs little, and to the degree that one needs less, the more perfect one is.

To pace about, looking to obtain status, looking to attain 'importance' - I can think of nothing more ridiculous.

Genius, like a thunderstorm, comes up against the wind.

Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read. Ultimately, you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books.

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.