Troy, Turkey - 20061. “A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light. “
2. “Accused men are often attractive. It's a remarkable phenomenon, almost a natural law.”
3. “A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.”
4. “Any man can call himself great.”
5. "Belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light."
6. “Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.”
7. “Every man lives behind bars, which he carries within him.”
8. ”From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached. “
9. "If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skulls, then why do we read it? Good God, we also would be happy if we had no books and such books that make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. What we must have are those books that come on us like ill fortune, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us."
10. "I have often thought that the best mode of life for me would be to sit in the innermost room of a spacious locked cellar with my writing things and a lamp.... And how I would write! From what depths I would drag it up! Without effort! For extreme concentration known no effort. The trouble is that I might not be able to keep it up for long, and at the first failure... would be bound to end in a grandiose fit of madness."
11. ”In the fight between you and the world, back the world. “
12. ”It's often safer to be in chains than to be free. “
13. ”Let me remind you of the old maxim: people under suspicion are better moving than at rest, since at rest they may be sitting in the balance without knowing it, being weighed together with their sins. “
14. "Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come."
15. "Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself."
16. "Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says: 'Go over,' he does not mean that we should cross over to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labor were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something too that he cannot designate more precisely, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter."
17. “Our world is merely a practical joke of God.”
18. "The clocks are not in unison; the inner one runs crazily on at a devilish or demonic or in any case inhuman pace, the outer one limps along at its usual speed. What else can happen but that the worlds split apart, and they do split apart, or at least clash in a fearful manner."
19. "Then I shall remind you of the old verdict: the person under suspicion is better to be moving than at rest, for at rest on cane, without knowing it, be in the balance being weighed together with one's sins."
20. “There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction. One has to go abroad in order to find the home one has lost.”
21. "There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise, it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return."
22. “The splendor of life forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.”
23. "The tremendous world I have inside my head. But how free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me."
24. “The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon.”
25. “We are sinful not merely because we have eaten of the tree of knowledge, but also because we have not eaten of the tree of life.”
26. “Writing means revealing oneself to excess.”
27. “Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”
28. “You are free and that is why you are lost.”
29. “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.”
30. “You do not need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait.
Do not even wait, be 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.”
31. ”You may object that it is not a trial at all; you are quite right, for it is only a trial if I recognize it as such. “
32. “Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
