“Even the wisest man grows tense/with some sort of violence/before he can accomplish fate,/know his work or choose his mate.”

“Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, and emerges ahead of his accomplishments.”

“As a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing,but does only and wholly what he must do...”

“The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men---as well as his great moments of grand harmony---a rare accident even in us! A sort of planetary motion---”

“We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he canplay Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in themorning.”

“It was strange even after suffering from fate, a person in love would choose the same fate over his life.”