“I cannot suppose there is anybody here who would think it either a good life, or an amusing one, to sit with one's hands before one doing nothing - to live like a gentleman, as fools call it.”

“Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading--that is a good life. A day that closely resembles every other day of the past ten or twenty years does not suggest itself as a good one. But who would not call Pasteur's life a good one, or Thomas Mann's?”

“I believe in nothing here, except a handful of people, a few ideas, and the fact that one cannot arrest movement. ”

“Do you think the penis ever gets tired?"Whose?Anybody's. I mean anybody with one. Does the penis ever just think: for God's sake pal, give it a rest? Or is it all: Woo-who!! Here we go again!”

“They call themselves believers and thereby signify that they are pilgrims, strangers and aliens in the world. Indeed, a staff in the hand does not identify a pilgrim as definitely as calling oneself a believer publicly testifies that one is on a journey, because faith simply means: What I am seeking is not here, and for that very reason I believe it. Faith expressly signifies the deep, strong, blessed restlessness that drives the believer so that he cannot settle down at rest in this world, and therefore the person who has settled down completely at rest has also ceased to be a believer, because a believer cannot sit still as one sits with a pilgrim's staff in one's hand – a believer travels forward”

“I don't see anybody here to-night whom one could possibly call a serious purpose.”