 Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself. |
| Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays. |
| Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood. |
| Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts. |
| Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God. |
| I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved. |
| Be that self which one truly is. |
| Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it. |
| Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate. |
| To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself. |
| People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. |
| It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important. |
| The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you. |
| During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk. |
| Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. |
| Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. |
| Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable. |
| Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward. |
| Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself. |
| The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays. |
