“The world must be romanticized. In this way the ordinary meaning may be found again.”

Philosophy bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.

A character is a completely fashioned will.

Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us.

The mysterious path goes inward. It is in us, and not anywhere else, where the eternity of the worlds, the past and the future are found.

Man is lyrical, woman epic, marriage dramatic.

Christianity is the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the rights of men.

Perceptibility is a kind of attentiveness.

The history of every individual man should be a Bible.

To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.

Where children are, there is the golden age.

All power appears only in transition. Permanent power is stuff.

Life is the beginning of death. Life is for the sake of death. Death is at once the end and the beginning—at once separation and closer union of the self. Through death the reduction is complete.

I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that fate and character are the same conception.

Genius in general is poetic. Where genius has been active it has been poetically active. The truly moral person is a poet.

Only as far as a man is happily married to himself is he fit for married life and family life in general.

One should, when overwhelmed by the shadow of a giant, move aside and see if the colossal shadow isn’t merely that of a pygmy blocking out the sun.

In order to find yourself, who you really are, you got to be with yourself; you got to hang out with yourself.

There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.

And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.

In prosperity it is very easy to find a friend; but in adversity it is the most difficult of all things.

Faith is a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty.

People want to find a meaning in everything and everyone. That’s the disease of our age.

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

Being a star just means that you just find your own special place, and that you shine where you are.