In the fields with which we are concerned, knowledge comes only in flashes. The text is the thunder rolling long afterward.

Any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness.

A blind determination to save the prestige of personal existence, rather than, through an impartial disdain for its impotence and entanglement, at least to detach it from the background of universal delusion, is triumphing almost everywhere.

The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].

Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.