“A Reflexão é o anjo exterminador da espontaneidade… Se fosse verdade que a reflexão devesse controlar a inclinação amorosa, nunca haveria casamento.”

“Bir genç kızı ne korkutur? Tin. Neden? Çünkü tin onun tüm dişi varlığının yadsınmasına yol açar. Erkeksi güzel bakışlar, çekici bir kişilik vs. iyi özelliklerdir ve bunlarla fetihler yapılabilir; ama asla kesin bir zafer kazanılamaz. Neden? Çünkü o zaman kızla, kızın kendi alanında savaş edilmiştir ve orda kız daima daha güçlüdür. Bu yöntemlerle bir kızın yüzü kızartılabilir, mahcup duruma düşürülebilir; ama güzelliğini ilginç hale getiren o anlatılması olanaksız, büyüleyici endişe uyandırılamaz.”

“It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived—forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward- looking position.”

“Just as a physician might say that there very likely is not one single living human being who is completely healthy, so anyone who really knows mankind might say that there is not one single living human being who does not despair a little, who does not secretly harbor an unrest, an inner strife, a disharmony, an anxiety about an unknown something or a something he does not even dare try to know, an anxiety about some possibility in existence or an anxiety about himself, so that, just as the physician speaks of going around with an illness in the body, he walks around with a sickness, carries around a sickness of the spirit that signals its presence at rare intervals in and through an anxiety he cannot explain.”

“Now, with God's help, I shall become myself.”

“Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself!”

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”