The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. – is sure to be noticed.
And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith.
There is something almost cruel about the Christian’s being placed in a world which in every way wants to pressure him to do the opposite of what God bids him to do.
To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. I am not a teacher, only a fellow student.
Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.
It seems to be my destiny to discourse on truth, insofar as I discover it, in such a way that all possible authority is simultaneously demolished.
I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.
The thinker without a paradox is like a lover without a feeling: a paltry mediocrity.
Only one human being recognized as one’s neighbour is necessary in order to cure a man of self-love.
This is the miracle of life: that each person who heeds him or herself knows what no scientist can ever know: who he or she is.
Philosophy always requires something more, requires the eternal, the true, in contrast to which even the fullest existence as such is but a happy moment.
It is more blessed to give than to receive, but then it is also more blessed to be able to do without than to have to have.
With respect to physical existence, one needs little, and to the degree that one needs less, the more perfect one is.
To venture causes anxiety. Not to venture is to lose oneself.
To the frivolous Christianity is certainly not glad tidings, for it wishes first of all to make them serious.
The commandment is that you shall love, but when you understand life and yourself, then it is as if you should not need to be commanded, because to love human beings is still the only thing worth living for; without this life you really do not live.
As the arrow, loosed from the bow by the hand of the practiced archer, does not rest till it has reached the mark, so men pass from God to God. He is the mark for which they have been created, and they do not rest till they find their rest in him.
The more men believe an idea to be true the greater the likelihood that the idea is mistaken. Those who are right usually stand alone.
May new sufferings torment your soul.
How ironical that it is by means of speech that man can degrade himself below the level of dumb creation – for a chatterbox is truly of a lower category than a dumb creature.