“My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.”

“The state we find ourselves in is sinful quite independent of guilt. ”

“My doubts stand in a circle around every word, I see them before I see the word, but what then! I do not see the word at all, I invent it.”

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

“Marrying, founding a family, accepting all the children that come, supporting them in this insecure world, and perhaps even guiding them a little, is, I am convinced, the utmost a human being can succeed in doing at all.”

“And I leave my post of observation and find I have had enough of this outside life; I feel that there is nothing more that I can learn here, either now or at any time. And I long to say a last goodbye to everything up here, to go down into my burrow never to return again, let things take their course, and not try to retard them with my profitless vigils.”

“But questions that don’t answer themselves at the very moment of their asking are never answered.”