We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.
We are not men, to have need of another, an eternal life; we are women, and for us one moment with man we love is everlasting Paradise, one moment far from the man we love is everlasting hell. It is here on earth that we women love out eternity.
There is no harsher means of punishment, than to answer malice with kindness.
I hate all virtues based on food and bloated bellies; though food and drink are good, I’m better slaked and fed by that inhuman flame which burns in our black bowels. I like to name that flame which burns within me God!
God sends rain, but He also sends hoods; and when the rain grows heavier, He sends a cave.
Lord, bend me, or I shall rot. Lord do not bend me too much, for I shall break. Lord bend me too much, who cares if I break!
You do miracles if you concentrate your mind on one thing and one thing only.
Everything in this world has a hidden meaning.
All roads lead to the earth; the abyss leads to God. Jump!
Be always restless, unsatisfied, unconforming. Whenever a habit becomes convenient, smash it! The greatest sin of all is satisfaction.
Before me is the abyss. How can I leap across it? And if I do not leap, how shall I ever be able to reach God?
Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.
Happy the youth who believes that his duty is to remake the world and bring it more in accord with virtue and justice, more in accord with his own heart. Woe to whoever commences his life without lunacy.
To think things out properly and fairly, a fellow’s got to be calm and old and toothless: When you’re an old gaffer with no teeth, it’s easy to say: ‘Damn it, boys, you mustn’t bite!’ But, when you’ve got all thirty-two teeth...
How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdash of books and paper blackened with ink!
Life on earth means: the sprouting of wings.
I should learn to run, to wrestle, to swim, to ride horses, to row, to drive a car, to fire a rifle. I should fill my soul with flesh. I should fill my flesh with soul. In fact, I should reconcile at last within me the two internal antagonists.
Good Lord, how can the rich bear to die?
With the world in the state it is today, whoever is virtuous must be so to the point of sainthood, and even beyond; whoever is a sinner must be so to the point of bestiality and even beyond. Today the middle road is no more.
Only after I’ve seen the visible can I imagine what the invisible is.