“My sorrow is my castle.”

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand.

The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

It is very important in life to know when your cue comes.

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

People understand me so poorly that they don’t even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.

It is impossible to exist without passion.

The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted.

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.

Boredom is the root of all evil.

Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible.

The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.

My melancholy is the most faithful sweetheart I have had.

What labels me, negates me.

In my great melancholy, I loved life, for I love my melancholy.

Old men are prone to invest the futures of young men with their own past sorrows.

Joy is more divine than sorrow, for joy is bread and sorrow is medicine.

To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You’re supposed to seem bored.

You can’t be disturbed by anything. There’s no emotion involved. You can’t feel sorrow, you can’t feel pity, there’s nothing you feel. The job has to be done.

In a moment of silence, I forgot about the sorrow of yesterday and the uncertainty of tomorrow. Could it be that simple! That this happy moment is life.

Go on then, color me broken whilst I feign my surprise. Let me summon some sorrow for this wreckage inside.

Life is the coexistence of all opposite values. Joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, up and down, hot and cold, here and there, light and darkness, birth and death. All experience is by contrast, and one would be meaningless without the other.

Love is the burning point of life, and since all life is sorrowful, so is love. The stronger the love, the more the pain. Love itself is pain, you might say -the pain of being truly alive.