and in that recurring dream, I found myself trapped in some sort of gigantic game of which I was unfamiliar with the rules; lost in a labyrinthine town of dark and damp, criss-crossing streets, ambiguous characters of uncertain authority having no idea of why I was there nor what I had to do, and where the first sign of the beginning of understanding was the wish to die.
Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.
The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.
For we are like tree trunks in the snow. In appearance they lie smoothly and a little push should be enough to set them rolling. No, it can't be done, for they are firmly wedded to the ground. But see, even that is only appearance.
There can be knowledge of the diabolical, but no belief in it, for more of the diabolical than there is does not exist.
No sooner said than done - so acts your man of worth.
A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.
What is meant by its nature for the highest and the best, spreads among the lowly people.
Only our concept of time makes it possible for us to speak of the Day of Judgment by that name in reality it is a summary court in perpetual session.
If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.
I passed by the brothel as though past the house of a beloved.
A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.
In a way, I was safe writing
"Don't you want to join us?" I was recently asked by an acquaintance when he ran across me alone after midnight in a coffeehouse that was already almost deserted. "No, I don't," I said.
There are two cardinal human sins out of which all others derive, deviate, and dissipate: impatience and lassitude (or perhaps nonchalance). On account of impatience they are driven out of paradise; on account of lassitude or nonchalance they do not return. Perhaps, however, only one main sense of sin is given: impatience. On account of impatience they are driven out, on account of impatience they do not turn back.
If education tries to make other persons out of us than we essentially are, deeper inside, it stultifies, and reproach matters.
I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require an expenditure of so much strength.
Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.
Every new discovery is assumed at once into the sum total of knowledge, and with that ceases in a sense to be a discovery; it dissolves into the whole and disappears, and one must have a trained scientific eye even to recognize it after that.
I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond.
This noble body, equipped with everything necessary, almost to the point of bursting, also appeared to carry freedom around with it.
The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.
How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.
One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.
Our art is a way of being dazzled by truth: the light on the grotesquely grimacing retreating face is true, and nothing else.
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