“What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it heaven.”

“close and difficult to realize is the god, but where danger abounds, grows what saves.”

“Denn sie, die uns das himmlische Feuer leihen, die Götter, schenken heiliges Leid uns auch.”

“The spirit of life relates to what has been described by the word “heaven”; the phenomenal world around us to what is described by the word “earth.” Heaven and earth are one. Only man, in his foolishness, endeavors to separate them. To the extent that he is successful in this it becomes hell in his own experience. Hell is simply the absence of the experience of heaven; it is the absence of the experience of life, in whatever degree. The experience of life as it really is, is heaven.”

“I'll tell you what I think of Alaska. It's neither heaven nor hell, but it'll make a man of you. It will test you and try you and tell you what you're made of," he shrugged. "And then when you think it has taken all you have, it will give something back that more than makes up for it.”

“Come! into the open, friend! admittedly only a little is gleaming todaydown and narrowly the heaven is enclosing us.Neither the mountains have yet risen of the forestthe peak as wished and empty the air is resting of singingIt’s dull today, the ways and lanes are slumbering and nearly it mayseem to me to be as in the leaden time. Nevertheless the wish succeeds, true believers don’t have doubts about Onehour and to the pleasure the day must furthermore be dedicated.”

“This man's spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and creed. He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments.”