Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. – Franz Kafka
We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt. – Franz Kafka
The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler. – Franz Kafka
How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world. – Franz Kafka
But every great scripture, whether Hebrew, Indian, Persian, or Chinese, apart from its religious value will be found to have some rare and special beauty of its own and in this respect the original Bible stands very high as a monument of sublime poetry and of artistic prose. – Lafcadio Hearn
A just thinker will allow full swing to his scepticism. I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot…. We are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Worship,” The Conduct of Life, 1860
We are all hostages, and we are all terrorists. This circuit has replaced that other one of masters and slaves, the dominating and the dominated, the exploiters and the exploited. It is worse than the one it replaces, but at least it liberates us from liberal nostalgia and the ruses of history. – Jean Baudrillard