315 quotes found
“The more he needs God, the more deeply he comprehends he is in need of God, and then the more he in his need presses forward to God, the more perfect he is... To need God is nothing to be ashamed o...”
“If someone who wanted to learn to dance were to say: For centuries, one generation after the other has learned the positions, and it is high time that I take advantage of this and promptly begin wi...”
“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
“How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.”
“Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.”
“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.”
“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are o...”
“When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love.”
“But we are curious about the result, just as we are curious about the way a book turns out. We do not want to know anything about the anxiety, the distress, the paradox. We carry on an esthetic fli...”
“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 ...”
“It costs a man just as much or even more to go to hell than to come to heaven. Narrow, exceedingly narrow is the way to perdition!”
“The crowd, in fact, is composed of individuals; it must therefore be in every man's power to become what he is, an individual. From becoming an individual no one, no one at all, is excluded, except...”
“Now she has power and passion and the struggle has significance for me-let the momentary consequences be what they may. Suppose that in her pride she becomes giddy, suppose that she does break with...”
“So now begins the first war with Cordelia' in which I retreat and thereby teach her to be victorious as she pursues me. I continually fall back, and in this backward movement I teach her to know th...”
“It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.”
“Every mental act is composed of doubt and belief,but it is belief that is the positive, it is beliefthat sustains thought and holds the world together.”
“For with his little secret that he cannot divulge, the poet buys this power of the word to tell everybody else's dark secrets. A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of th...”
“In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant… My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known — no wonder, then, that I return the love.”
“Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breath forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when ...”
“By seeing the multitude of people around it, by being busied with all sorts of worldly affairs, by being wise to the ways of the world, such a person forgets himself, in a divine sense forgets his ...”
