How difficult, how extremely difficult for the soul to sever itself from its body the world: from mountains, seas, cities, people. The soul is an octopus and these are its tentacles. ... No force anywhere on earth is as imperialistic as the human soul. It occupies and is occupied in turn, but it always considers its empire too narrow. Suffocating, it desires to conquer the world in order to breathe freely.

Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at …

As long as our souls remain strong, that is all that matters; as long as they don't decline. Because with the fall of certain souls in this world, the world it…

I felt that human partitions - bodies, brains, and souls - were capable of being demolished, and that humanity might return again, after frightfully bloody wan…

In love, at one of its poles you find the personal, and at the other the impersonal. At one you have the positive assertion - Here I am; at the other the equal…

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were.

Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very slight and transient…