“What’s terrible is that there’s nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.”

I don’t see why it’s impossible to express everything that’s on one’s mind.

What did I hope for, what did I expect, what rich future did I foresee, when the phantom of my first love, rising up for an instant, barely called forth one sigh, one mournful sentiment?

Most people can’t understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.

However much you knock at nature’s door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.

Time, as is well known, sometimes flies like a bird and sometimes crawls like a worm, but human beings are generally particularly happy when they don’t notice whether it’s passing quickly or slowly.

Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.

Belonging to oneself–the whole essence of life lies in that.

No matter how often you knock at nature’s door, she won’t answer in words you can understand–for Nature is dumb. She’ll vibrate and moan like a violin, but you mustn’t expect a song.

Love isn’t actually a feeling at all–it’s an illness, a certain condition of body and soul…. Usually it takes possession of someone without his permission, all of a sudden, against his will–just like cholera or a fever.

That is what poetry can do. It speaks to us of what does not exist, which is not only better than what exists, but even more like the truth.

I’m incapable of describing the feeling with which I left. I wouldn’t want it ever to be repeated, but I would have considered myself unfortunate if I’d never experienced it.

It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.

I was afraid of looking into my heart…afraid of thinking seriously about anything…I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to admit to myself that I was not loved.

Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.

Even nightingales can’t be fed on fairy tales.

Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you, and that’s all!

To get rid of predestination we have been willing to degrade our God into a godling.

Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it.

Any time you can degrade or take away the top leadership of an organization, it’s a positive step forward.

Marriage is a very sacred institution and should not be degraded by allowing every other type of relationship to be made equivalent to it.

A wrong concept misleads the understanding; a wrong deed degrades the whole man, and may eventually demolish the structure of the human ego.

To conjure with the passive culture and adapt to its rules is to degrade and deny the fullness of our meaning and intention.

History is not a web woven with innocent hands. Among all the causes which degrade and demoralize men, power is the most constant and most active.

Man is not made better by being degraded; he is seldom restrained from crime by harsh measures, except the principle of fear predominates in his character; and then he is never made radically better for its influence.