“After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.”

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.

One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many.

Faith: not wanting to know what the truth is.

One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

Meaning and morality of one’s life come from within oneself.

Women make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.

Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.

All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.

There is an innocence in admiration: it occurs in one who has not yet realized that they might one day be admired.

I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.