“Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid
“It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.
“Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, alltogether incalculable
“Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth
“People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something
“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
“Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearances
“There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming