We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

Religions get lost as people do.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgement by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

No sooner said than done - so acts your man of worth.

One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.

The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.

If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.

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.

There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.

We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.

Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.

Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

My "fear" is my substance, and probably the best part of me.

The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.

The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings.

My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.

The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual. That is why the revolutionary spiritual movements that declare all former things worthless are in the right, for nothing has yet happened.

He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.

We are separated from God on two sides; the Fall separates us from Him, the Tree of Life separates Him from us.