“Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.”

One should never spurn a penitent criminal: in his despair he may become twice as much a criminal as before.

No good ever becomes of a man who forgets an old friend.

For what did the creator prepare me,Why did he so terribly contradict, The hopes of my youth?

And I, as I lived, in an alien land, Will die a slave and an orphan.

Women love only those whom they do not know!

My love had grown one with my soul; it became darker, but did not go out.

An unusual beginning must have an unusual end.

What is this eternity to me without you? What is the infinity of my domains? Empty ringing words, A spacious temple – without a divinity!

Women only love those that they don’t know.

In the first place, [his eyes] never laughed when he laughed. Have you ever noticed this peculiarity some people have? It is either the sign of an evil nature or of a profound and lasting sorrow.

Out of life’s storm I carried only a few ideas – and not one feeling.

My whole life has been merely a succession of miserable and unsuccessful denials of feelings or reason.

Of two friends, one is always the slave of the other, although frequently neither acknowledges the fact to himself.

Happy people are ignoramuses and glory is nothing else but success, and to achieve it one only has to be cunning.

We practically always excuse things when we understand them.

Evil spawns evil. The first experience of torture gives an understanding of the pleasure in tormenting others.

The soul, in its power, is present in some way in the entire universe, because it apprehends substances which are not included in the body in which it lives, although they are related to it.

All our feelings, like the artist’s paints and brush, are ways of communicating and sharing something meaningful from us to the world.

As partisans of our own way of life, we cannot help thinking in a partisan manner.

I don’t know any other way to live but to wake up everyday armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.

The Stars are a long way off, and their words get somewhat dulled in the message.

In my clinical experience, the greatest block to a person’s development is his having to take on a way of life which is not rooted in his own powers.

If a commodity were in no way useful, – in other words, if it could in no way contribute to our gratification, – it would be destitute of exchangeable value, however scarce it might be, or whatever quantity of labour might be necessary to procure it.

How I grew up, everybody was telling me, “You can’t do this, you can’t get tattoos, you’ve got to look a certain way.” Now, I’m like, “Why?”