For to be poised against fatality, to meet adverse conditions gracefully, is more than simple endurance; it is an act of aggression, a positive triumph.

A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.

What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.

Thought that can merge wholly into feeling, feeling that can merge wholly into thought - these are the artist's highest joy.

A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.

Isn't it grand, isn't it good, that language has only one word for everything we associate with love - from utter sanctity to the most fleshly lust? The result is perfect clarity in ambiguity, for love cannot be disembodied even in its most sanctified forms, nor is it without sanctity even at its most fleshly. Love is always simply itself, both as a subtle affirmation of life and as the highest passion; love is our sympathy with organic life.

There is only one real misfortune: to forfeit one's own good opinion of oneself. Lose your complacency, once betray your own self-contempt and the world will unhesitatingly endorse it.