To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Once you label me, you negate me.

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.

The most painful state of living is remembering the future.

And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not.

In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known -- no wonder, then, that I return the love.

Prayer does not change God, but changes him who prays.

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

If you marry you will regret it. If you do not marry you will regret it. If you marry or do not marry, you will regret it.

A poet is an unhappy being whose heart it torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music... and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: 'Sing for us soon again;' that is as much as to say. 'May new sufferings torment your soul.'

Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him, for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low, could still be saved; the bitterest enemy and also he who was your friend could again be your friend; love that has grown cold can kindle.

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it. .

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

If a man cannot forget, he will never amount to much.