Today, for a Jew who writes in the German language, it is totally impossible to make a living. In no group do I see as much misery, disappointment, desperation and hopelessness as in Jewish writers who write in German.
The works of the great artists are silent books of eternal truths.
It is better to be the servant of God than the ruler of men.
Once shame touches your being at any point, even the most distant nerve is implicated, whether you know it or not; any fleeting encounter or random thought will rake up the anguish and add to it.
It is better to pay tribute of gold to the enemy than tribute of blood in war.
Hairdressers are professional gossips; when only the hands are busy, the tongue is seldom still.
Why is it that the stupidest people are always the most good-natured?
The subject of a rumor is always the last to hear it.
For one who is having no personal experience, the passionate disquiet of others is at any rate a titillation of the nerves, like seeing a play or listening to music.
The dressmaker doesn’t have problems unless the dress has to hide rather than reveal.
Everything in life that deviates from the straight and, so to speak, normal line, makes people first curious and then indignant.
Ah, how fatefully swift is the move from one feeling to another.
Something indefinite is always worse than something definite, a strong fear that doesn’t last very long is easier than one that’s nebulous but doesn’t go away.
Against my will, I became a witness to the most terrible defeat of reason and to the most savage triumph of brutality ever chroniclednever before did a generation suffer such a moral setback after it had attained such intellectual heights.
Whilst all the land was ringed with bristling arms And flames laid waste our world, All that was left me was a little garden And thou within it, my beloved, my comrade.
Formerly man had only a body and a soul. Now he needs a passport as well for without it he will not be treated like a human being.
As we grow old, we become aware that death is drawing near; his shadow falls across our path; the realities of life seem less crude than of yore, they touch our senses less intimately, and they lose much of their poignancy.
He who studies without passion will never become anything more than a pedant.
It is a blessing not yet to have acquired that over-keen, diagnostic, misanthropic eye, and to be able to look at people and things trustfully when one first sees them.
States of profound happiness, like all other forms of intoxication, are apt to befuddle the wits; intense enjoyment of the present always makes one forget the past.
For the more a man limits himself, the nearer he is on the other hand to what is limitless.