It requires courage not to surrender oneself to the ingenious or compassionate counsels of despair that would induce a man to eliminate himself from the ranks of the living; but it does not follow from this that every huckster who is fattened and nourished in self-confidence has more courage than the man who yielded to despair. |
It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important. |
It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting. |
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. |
Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living. |
Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards. |
Life must be understood backwards. But it must be lived forward. |
Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth -look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment. |
Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself. |
Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable. |
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it. |
Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid. |
Nothing, nothing, nothing, no error, no crime is so absolutely repugnant to God as everything which is official; and why? because the official is so impersonal and therefore the deepest insult which can be offered to a personality |
Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life. He does not die with deliberation but from deliberation. |
Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate. |