“My today and each of my yesterdays, my rises and falls, are so diverse that I sometimes feel as if I had lived not one, but several existences, each one different from the others.”

“But theoretical, imagined suffering is not what distresses a man and destroys his peace of mind. Only what you have seen with pitying eyes can really shake you.”

“Exalt yourself by devoting yourself to others, enrich yourself by making everyone’s destiny your own, by enduring and understanding every facet of human suffering through your pity.”

“For the more a man restricts himself the closer he is, conversely, to infinity.”

“She could be lively only in the midst of life; in isolation she dwindled to a shadow.”

“Once more my pity had been stronger than my will.”

“But I see nothing miraculous about it. Nothing makes one as healthy as happiness, and there is no greater happiness than making someone else happy.”

“It is never until one realizes that one means something to others that one feels there is any point or purpose in one’s own existence.”

“A first premonition of the rich variety of life had come to him; for the first time he thought he had understood the nature of human beings - they needed each other even when they appeared hostile, and it was very sweet to be loved by them.”

“I realized that there was no point in denying oneself a pleasure because it was denied another, in refusing to allow oneself to be happy because someone else was unhappy.”

“One only makes books in order to keep in touch with one's fellows after one has ceased to breath, and thus to defend oneself against the inexorable fate of all that lives - transitoriness and oblivion.”

“Art can bring us consolation as individuals,” he said, “but it is powerless against reality.”

“People and events don't disappoint us, our models of reality do. It is my model of reality that determines my happiness or disappointments.”

“Beware of pity.”

“Formerly man had only a body and a soul. Now he needs a passport as well for without it he will not be treated like a human being.”

“Once a man has found himself there is nothing in this world that he can lose. And once he has understood the humanity in himself, he will understand all human beings.”

“For the first time in my life I began to realize that it is not evil and brutality, but nearly always weakness, that is to blame for the worst things that happen in this world.”

“Wer einmal sich selbst gefunden, kann nichts auf dieser Welt mehr verlieren.”

“In this instant, shaken to her very depths, this ecstatic human being has a first inkling that the soul is made of stuff so mysteriously elastic that a single event can make it big enough to contain the infinite.”

“Freedom is not possible without authority - otherwise it would turn into chaos and authority is not possible without freedom - otherwise it would turn into tyranny.”

“In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd ...

“How terrible this darkness was, how bewildering, and yet mysteriously beautiful!”

“All I know is that I shall be alone again. There is nothing more terrible than to be alone among human beings.”

“No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.”