“It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite
“There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming
“Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic, if it is pulled out I shall die
“It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.
“There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish
“It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new
“One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them
“I cannot stop thinking that I died before I was born and that at my death I will return to the same state
“Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful
“Trust no future, however pleasant! Let the dead past bury its dead! Act, act in the living present! Heart within and God overhead
“The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service
“Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of; they just turn up some of the ill weeds on to the surface
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
“The value of life ist not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them; a man may live long yet very little