Without risk, faith is an impossibility.
I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations – one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it – you will regret both.
Adversity not only draws people together, but brings forth that beautiful inward friendship.
Teach me, 0 God, not to torture myself, not to make a martyr out of myself through stifling reflection, but rather teach me to breathe deeply in faith.
Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.
It is the normal state of the human heart to try to build its identity around something besides God.
Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.
Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life’s relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.
Philosophy is life’s dry-nurse, who can take care of us – but not suckle us.
The crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.
Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.
I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.
It’s better to get lost in the passion than to lose the passion.
A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.
The truth is a trap: you cannot get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.
Be that self which one truly is.
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.