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

You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.

Human nature, essentially changeable, unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint; if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it rends everything asunder, the wall, the bonds and its very self.(Das menschliche Wesen, leichtfertig in seinem Grund, von der Natur des auffliegenden Staubes, verträgt keine Fesselung; fesselt es sich selbst, wird es bald wahnsinnig an den Fesseln zu rütteln anfangen und Mauer, Kette und sich selbst in alle Himmelsrichtungen zerreißen.)

For humans the idea of freedom is all too often a means of deceiving themselves. And although freedom is among the most exalted of feelings, so is the illusion of freedom among the most exalted of illusions.

Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment.

At the same time all the houses round about promptly took part in this silence, and so did the darkness above them, reaching as far as the stars. And the footsteps of invisible passers-by, whose course I had no wish to guess at, the wind that kept on driving against the other side of the street, the gramophone singing behind closed windows in some room - they made themselves heard in this silence, as if they had owned it for ever and ever.

But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end?

In the struggle between yourself and the world, second the world.(Im Kampf zwischen Dir und der Welt, sekundiere der Welt)

If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without ascending it, the work would have been permitted.(Wenn es möglich gewesen wäre, den Turm von Babel zu erbauern ohne ihn zu erklettern, es wäre erlaubt worden.)