There sat I, a faded being, under faded leaves.

4 December. To die would mean nothing else than to surrender a nothing to the nothing, but that would be impossible to conceive, for how could a person, even only as a nothing, consciously surrender himself to the nothing, and not merely to an empty nothing but rather to a roaring nothing whose nothingness consists only in its incomprehensibility.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

Books are a narcotic

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

You may object that it is not a trial at all; you are quite right, for it is only a trial if I recognize it as such.