“A person who does not know the history of the last 3,000 years wanders in the darkness of ignorance, unable to make sense of the reality around him”

“Is it not enough that we cannot make one another happy, must we also rob one another of the pleasures that any heart may permit itself now and then? And name me a person who in a bad mood will be decent enough to hide it, to bear it alone, without destroying the joy around him. Is it not rather an inner dissatisfaction with our own unworthiness, a dislike of ourselves that is always associated with envy aggravated by foolish conceit? We see people happy and not made happy by us, and that is unbearable.”

“Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,because the mass man will mock it right away.I praise what is truly alive,what longs to be burned to death.In the calm water of the love-nights,where you were begotten, where you have begotten,a strange feeling comes over you,when you see the silent candle burning.Now you are no longer caughtin the obsession with darkness,and a desire for higher love-makingsweeps you upward.Distance does not make you falter.Now, arriving in magic, flying,and finally, insane for the light,you are the butterfly and you are gone.And so long as you haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow,you are only a troubled gueston the dark earth.”

“A lovely, pure, noble, and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear, and must not cast away. All duties are holy for him; the present is too hard. Impossibilities have been required of him; not in themselves impossibilities, but such for him. He winds, and turns, and torments himself; he advances and recoils, is ever put in mind, ever puts himself in mind; at last does all but lose his purpose from his thoughts; yet still without recovering his peace of mind.”

“Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.”

“He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.”

“A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.”