“I stick my finger in existence — it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world?”

“A son is a mirror in which the father sees himself reflected, and the father is a mirror in which the son sees himself as he will be in the future.”

“There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys; they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked out the sum for themselves.”

“It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.”

“The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife etc., is sure to be noticed.”

“Faith sees best in the dark.”

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.”

“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”

“You may never know what results come of your actions. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

“The time is always right to do what's right.”