Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.

To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.

To love someone means to see them as God intended them.

I love mankind he said but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole the less I love man in particular.

The soul is healed by being with children.

What is hell I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

Above all dont lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him or around him and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

Repeat to yourself every day and as often as you can O Lord have mercy on all those who will appear before You today. For every hour every second thousands of men leave this world and their souls appear before the Lord and no one knows how many of them leave this earth in isolation sadness and anguish with no one to take pity on them or even care whether they live or die. And so your prayer for such a man will rise to the Lord from the other end of the earth although he may never have heard of you or you of him. But his soul as it stands trembling before the Lord will be cheered and gladdened to learn that there is someone on earth who loves him. And the Lords mercy will be even greater to both of you for however great your pity for the man Gods pity will be much greater for He is infinitely more merciful and more loving than you are.

And if only fate would have sent him repentance - burning repentance that would have torn his heart and robbed him of sleep that repentance the awful agony of which brings visions of hanging and drowning

Because it begins to seem to me at such times that I am incapable of beginning a life in real life because it has seemed to me that I have lost all touch all instinct for the actual the real because at last I have cursed myself because after my fantastic nights I have moments of returning sobriety which are awful Meanwhile you hear the whirl and roar of the crowd in the vortex of life around you you hear you see men living in reality you see that life for them is not forbidden that their life does not float away like a dream like a vision that their life is being eternally renewed eternally youthful and not one hour of it is the same as another while fancy is so spiritless monotonous to vulgarity and easily scared the slave of shadows of the idea the slave of the first cloud that shrouds the sun... One feels that this inexhaustible fancy is weary at last and worn out with continual exercise because one is growing into manhood outgrowing ones old ideals they are being shattered into fragments into dust if there is no other life one must build one up from the fragments. And meanwhile the soul longs and craves for something else And in vain the dreamer rakes over his old dreams as though seeking a spark among the embers to fan them into flame to warm his chilled heart by the rekindled fire and to rouse up in it again all that was so sweet that touched his heart that set his blood boiling drew tears from his eyes and so luxuriously deceived him