For everyone now strives most of all to seperate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life, but full suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation.
Men are made for happiness, and he who is completely happy has the right to say to himself, ‘I am doing God’s will on earth.
Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don’t say that you’ve wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.
You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won’t be wiser?
But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt.
I love mankind, he said, “but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.
Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don’t say that you’ve wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.
Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and, as it were, to guide us.
Whatever distinguishes one lump of flesh from another when we’re alive, we’re all the same once we’re dead. Just used-up shells.
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.