Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.
The paradox in Christian truth is invariably due to the fact that it is the truth that exists for God. The standard of measure and the end is superhuman; and there is only one relationship possible: faith.
It is impossible to exist without passion.
The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.
On the secretly blushing cheek is reflected the glow of the heart.
My standpoint is armed neutrality.
It is very important in life to know when your cue comes.
No one may pride himself at being more than an individual, and no one despondently think that he is not an individual...
Don’t you know that a midnight hour comes when everyone has to take off his mask? Do you think life always lets itself be trifled with? Do you think you can sneak off a little before midnight to escape this?
Only the noble of heart are called to difficulty.
What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement.
It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand...
What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?
Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And If I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I want to see him.
The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted.
Nothing is as heady as the wine of possibility.
In the end, therefore, money will be the one thing people will desire, which is moreover only representative, an abstraction. Nowadays a young man hardly envies anyone his gifts, his art, the love of a beautiful girl, or his fame; he only envies him his money. Give me money, he will say, and I am saved... He would die with nothing to reproach himself with, and under the impression that if only he had had the money he might really have lived and might even have achieved something great.
And this is the simple truth – that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.