“In cheerful souls there is no wit. Wit shows a disturbance of the equipoise.”

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.

Man has his being in truth–if he sacrifices truth he sacrifices himself. Whoever betrays truth betrays himself. It is not a question of lying–but of acting against one’s conviction.

Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, Immortality. Which, then, is more practical, Philosophy or Economy?

Everything at a distance turns into poetry; distant mountains, distant people, distant events; all become Romantic.

Our bodies are molded rivers.

Where are we really going? Always home.

Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things.

Every disease is a musical problem; every cure is a musical solution.

The ideal of morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of highest strength, of most powerful life. It is the maximum of the savage.

Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests.

The true Poet is all-knowing; he is an actual world in miniature.

Nature is a petrified magic city.

The Bible begins gloriously with Paradise, the symbol of youth, and ends with the everlasting kingdom, with the holy city. The history of every man should be a Bible.

I like things that go into hidden, mysterious places, places I want to explore that are very disturbing. In that disturbing thing, there is sometimes tremendous poetry and truth.

The only thing that disturbs me is that many psychopaths say they had a very happy childhood.

Death is repose, but the thought of death disturbs all repose.

The great thing about faith in God is that it keeps a man undisturbed in the midst of disturbance.

Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people’s, if we are always criticizing trivial actions – which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives.

I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.

You can not hope to arrive at harmony in your life while stirring up disturbances in anothers.

Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.