Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart.

Books and drafts mean something quite different for different thinkers. One collects in a book the lights he was able to steal and carry home swiftly out of the rays of some insight that suddenly dawned on him, while another thinker offers us nothing but shadows - images in black and grey of what had built up in his soul the day before.

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his 'divine service.'

For a tree to become tall it must grow tough roots among the rocks.