Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Once you label me you negate me.

Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearences.

What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.

If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.

Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.

The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.

I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.

Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.

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.

The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.

Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.

There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life's highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.

It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.

A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

Don't forget to love yourself.

Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.

Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.

Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.

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.

Once you label me you negate me.

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.