I live in a kind of tension between the will to say yes to my suffering, and my inability to utter this yes with complete sincerity. - Karl Jaspers

To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet.

I should not suffer so deeply from lack of communication or find such unique pleasure in authentic communication if I for myself, in absolute solitude, could be certain of the truth. But I am only in conjunction with the Other, alone I am nothing.

The battle is a collision of power, of gods themselves: man is only a pawn in these terrible games, or their scene, or their medium; but man's greatness consists precisely in his act of becoming such medium. By this act he becomes imbued with a soul and identical with the powers.