When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary; when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.

It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.

To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.

It is a quite remarkable fact that the great religions of the most civilized peoples are more deeply fraught with sadness than the simpler beliefs of earlier societies. This certainly does not mean that the current of pessimism is eventually to submerge the other, but it proves that it does not lose ground and that it does not seem destined to disappear.

Although our moral conscience is a part of our consciousness, we do not feel ourselves on an equality with it. In this voice which makes itself heard only to give us orders and establish prohibitions, we cannot recognize our own voices; the very tone in which it speaks to us warns us that it expresses something within us that is not of ourselves.

When man discovered the mirror, he began to lose his soul.

The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings.