Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.
It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.
All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.
I can once more carry on a conversation with myself, and don’t stare so into complete emptiness. Only in this way is there any possibility of improvement for me.
I lack nothing. I only needed myself.
And so gentlemen, I learned. Oh, if you have to learn, you learn; if you’re desperate for a way out, you learn; you learn pitilessly. You stand over yourself with a whip in your hand; if there’s the least resistance, you lash yourself.
I like to make use of what I know.
It’s only because of their stupidity that they’re able to be so sure of themselves.
Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire.
Some deny the existence of misery by pointing to the sun; he denies the existence of the sun by pointing to misery.
It’s impossible to defend oneself in the absence of goodwill.
A book should serve as an axe to the ice inside us.
We need the books that affect us like a disaster.
What am I doing here in this endless winter?
I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.
April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone – never.
In a way, I was safe writing.
My doubts stand in a circle around every word, I see them before I see the word, but what then! I do not see the word at all, I invent it.
But questions that don’t answer themselves at the very moment of their asking are never answered.
The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. Only after death, only in solitude, does a man’s true nature emerge. In death, as on the chimney sweep’s Saturday night, the soot gets washed from his body.