He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn't yet lived.

Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.

Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.

Sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man
the most guilty.

You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.

Paths are made by walking.

It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.

There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction.

If you have food in your jaws you have solved all questions for the time being.

Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one's ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.

I passed by the brothel as though
past the house of a beloved.

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.

Only our concept of time makes it possible for us to speak of the Day of Judgement by that name; in reality it is a constant court in perpetual session.

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.

It isn't necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you.

First impressions are always unreliable.

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

The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.

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.

Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire.