But how could you live and have no story to tell?

Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.

The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.

In thousands of agonies, I exist. I'm tormented on the rack, but I exist!Though I sit alone in a pillar, I exist!I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.

Perhaps," you will add, grinning, "those who have never been slapped will also not understand" - thereby politely hinting that I, too, may have experienced a slap in my life, and am therefore speaking as a connoisseur.

So against the grain I serve to produce events and do what’s irrational because I am commanded to. For all their indisputable intelligence, men take this farce as something serious, and that is their tragedy. They suffer, of course… but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it?

If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God have pity upon you. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others.

On our earth we can only love withsuffering and through suffering.

The chief thing is to love others likeyourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted - you will find out at once how to arrange it all.