"All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue."

"So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being."

"I believe that we should only read those books that bite and sting us. If a book does not rouse us with a blow then why read it?"

"All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else."

"Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places."

"Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues."

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief."

"I am a typical example of Western Jew. This means I don't have a moment of peace, that nothing has come easily to me, not just the present and the future, but even the past, that thing that each man receives as his birth-right: even that I have to conquer, and perhaps that is the hardest task."

"Today one may pluck out one's very heart and not find it."

"We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."

"He had probably been thrown out of a wine shop, and it hadn't quite dawned on him yet."

"Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me."

"The meaning of life is that it ends."

"Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms."

"German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties; I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it's almost like a meeting."

"Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold, all is good. Once in another world, you must hold your tongue."

"Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency."

"L'Éternité, c'est long ... surtout vers la fin."

"One hears a great many things, true, but can gather nothing definite."

"How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?"

"The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum."

"Was he a beast if music could move him so?"

"The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune,that makes us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide,lost in a forest remote from all human habitation."

"Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair."

"God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them."

"Judgement does not come suddenly, the proceedings gradually merge into the judgement."

"It is only because of their stupidity that they are able to be so sure of themselves."

"Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it."

"I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. Basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralyzing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful."

"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."

"A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood."

"He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found."

"In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing."

"Dread of night. Dread of not-night."

"Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers."

"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."

"No sooner said than done - so acts your man of worth."

"Oh well, memories, said I. Yes, even remembering in itself is sad, yet how much more its object! Don't let yourself in for things like that, it's not for you and not for me. It only weakens one's present position without strengthening the former one - nothing is more obvious - quite apart from the fact that the former one doesn't need strengthening."

"Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted."

"Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment."

"The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one's striving."

"If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?"

"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."

"I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy."

"The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not."