All the political, social, and economic improvements, all the technical progress cannot have any regenerating significance, so long as our inner life remains as it is at present.
There is only one essence, always the same. As yet, man has found no other means to elevate himself – none but the routing of matter and the submission of the individual to an end which transcends the individual, even though that end be chimerical. When the heart believes and loves, nothing chimerical exists; nothing exists but.
If you have faith, a splinter from an old door will become a holy relic. And if you have no faith the entire holy cross will become an old door.
On the way between nothingness and God, we dance and weep.
Whoever is rich, and is a communist, is an idiot,” he would say. ” Whoever is poor, and is not a communist, is a bigger idiot.
You’ve got a devil inside you, as well, but you don’t know his name yet, and, since you don’t know that, you can’t breathe. Baptise him, boss, and you’ll feel better!
I am not going to kill sin by killing the sinners; I am not going to wage war against evildoers and infidels. I shall preach love, and I shall love; I shall preach concord, and shall practice brotherly love toward everyone in the world.
Good Lord, just think what poor old God must go through also,” he said with a laugh. “He certainly got himself in hot water when he created the world. The fish screams, Don’t blind me, Lord; don’t let me enter the nets! The fisherman screams, Blind the fish, Lord; make him enter the nets! Which one is God supposed to listen to? Sometimes he listens to the fish, sometimes to the fisherman – and that’s the way the world goes round!
Was this man the Messiah whom God had promised him or wasn’t he? All the miracles he performed could also be performed by Satan, who could even resurrect the dead. The miracles therefore did not give the rabbi sufficient basis to pass judgment; nor did the prophecies. Satan was a sly and exceedingly powerful archangel. In order to deceive mankind he was capable of making his words and actions fit the holy prophecies to perfection.
O brain, be flowers that nightingales may come to sing!
I am always filled with melancholy. It’s as if I see everything black. Everything wounds me deeply.
Love responsibility. Say: It is my duty, and mine alone, to save the earth. If it is not saved, then I alone am to blame.
At night the jackals came and ate their feet, and the next morning crows flew down and ate their eyes.
She disappeared. Since then I had never thought anymore of her. Nevertheless, she must have continued to live deep down in my heart, and today, on this empty coast, she reappeared, pale and plaintive, from the depths of my being.
Good god how much I have suffered, but serenely, because I understood that what I endured was nothing, just a caress compared to the world’s boundless misfortune.
But how can anyone put a bridle on man’s vanity and arrogance? But how can Purity walk the earth without covering her feet with mud?
In this way, without understanding how, I entered sleep together with Christ’s passion and the nightingales’ warbling, just as the soul will enter Paradise.
I would fill my soul with flesh, my flesh with soul.
You, too, have a devil inside you but you still don’t know his name and because you don’t know his name, you suffocate. Baptize him, Boss, and you’ll find relief.
Our body is a ship that sails on deep blue waters. What is our goal? To be shipwrecked!