You can no more bridle passions with logic than you can justify them in the law courts. Passions are facts and not dogmas.

False gods must be repudiated, but that is not all: The reasons for their existence must be sought beneath their masks.

Compassionate love may be strong. It sobs, it burns, then it wipes away its tears – and it does nothing.

Strong drink stupefies a man and makes it possible for him to forget; it gives him an artificial cheeriness, an artificial excitement; and the pleasure of this state is increased by the low level of civilization and the narrow empty life to which these men are confined.

History is the autobiography of a madman.

Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men.

We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation.