“You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.”

It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.

You only need to change your direction, said the cat, and ate it up.

People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as ‘nauseatingly miserable beyond repair’.

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.

Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.

It certainly was not my intention to make you suffer, yet I have done so; obviously it never will be my intention to make you suffer, yet I shall always do so.

I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.

Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.

Kill me, or you are a murderer.

Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.

I’m doing badly, I’m doing well, whichever you prefer.

Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.

I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.

Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.

He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.

Magnetic lines of force convey a far better and purer idea than the phrase magnetic current or magnetic flood: it avoids the assumption of a current or of two currents and also of fluids or a fluid, yet conveys a full and useful pictorial idea to the mind.

It hurts my head, but it’s fine because it’s something I do every day. You can’t avoid the gymnastics questions.

Rock bottom is a crisis. And everyone wants to avoid crisis. But what ‘crisis’ means literally is ‘to sift’ – like a child who goes to the beach, lifts up the sand, and watches all the sand fall away, hoping that there’s treasure left over. That’s what crisis does.

Every job will demand some sacrifice. The key is to avoid unnecessary sacrifice.

People avoid action. Often because they are afraid of the consequences, for action means risk and danger. Danger seems terrible from a distance; it is not so bad if you have a close look at it

I dislike death, however, there are some things I dislike more than death. Therefore, there are times when I will not avoid danger.

Whether we get to avoid pain and suffering or we must persevere in the midst of it, our deliverance comes when we’re dragged from the enemy of our souls to the heart of God.

The disease of men is that they neglect their own fields and go to weed the fields of others.