Sin always comes openly and can at once be grasped by means of the senses. It walks on its roots and does not have to be torn out.  

Poseidon grew tired of his seas. The trident fell from his grasp. Silent, there he sat on a rocky coast, and a gull, stupefied by his presence, flashed in wavering circles round his head.  

But here is something for you to tell your workmates downstairs: we here shall not rest until we have made a drawing-room of your shaft, and if you do not all finally go to your doom in patent-leather shoes, then you shall not go at all.  

All human errors are impatience.  

It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.  

One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.  

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.  

Two tasks at the beginning of your life: to narrow your orbit more and more, and ever and again to check whether you are not in hiding somewhere outside your orbit.  

Many people assume that besides the great primal deception there is also in every individual case a little special deception provided for their benefit, in other words that when a drama of love is performed on the stage, the actress has, apart from the hypocritical smile for her lover, also an especially insidious smile for the quite particular spectator in the top balcony. This is going too far.  

Our art is a way of being dazzled by the truth.  

There is no need for you to leave the house. Stay at your table and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't even wait, be completely quiet and alone. The world will offer itself to you to be unmasked; it can't do otherwise; in raptures it will writhe before you.