[The shock of finding a familiar word in an unfamiliar setting.] A SS man would examine us. Whenever he found a weak one, a musulman as we called them, he would write his number down: good for the cre...
Which is better, truth that is a lie or the lie that is truth?
What is man? Dust turned to hope.
We must not see person as anabstraction.Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets,with its own treasures, with its ownsources of anguish,
There are a thousand and one gates leading into the orchard of mystical truth. Every human being has his own gate. We must never make the mistake of wanting to enter the orchard by any gate but our ow...
Then he smiled. I shall always remember that smile. What world did it come from? Heavy snow continued to fall over the corpses.
Musíme se vzbouřit proti bohům a říkat: Chcete mi odepřít štěstí? Tak dobře, ukousnu si ho pořádné sousto! To je tváří v tvář utrpení jediná platná odpověď.
Love that makes everything complicated. While hate simplifies everything. Hatred puts accents on things and beings, and on what separates them. Love erases accents.
It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings--his last hopes, his charred...
It all belonged to everyone since it no longer belonged to anyone.
I knew that I was no longer arguing with him but with Death itself, with Death that he had already chosen.
Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?
And I, the former mystic, was thinking: Yes, man is stronger, greater than God. When Adam and Eve deceived You, You chased them from paradise. When You were displeased by Noah’s generation, You...
Music does not replace words, it gives tone to the words
I write to understand as much as to be understood.
If the only prayer you say throughout your life is "Thank You," then that will be enough.
Today's wealthy are poor though they don't know it. They can't bring their possessions to where we're all going.
They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions. (v)
There are those who tell me that I survived in order to write this text. I am not convinced. I don't know how I survived; I was weak, rather shy; I did nothing to save myself. A miracle? Certainly not...
The tragedy of man is that he doesn’t know how to distinguish between day and night.