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

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

Each new generation is reared by its predecessor; the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.

From top to bottom of the ladder, greed is aroused without knowing where to find ultimate foothold. Nothing can calm it, since its goal is far beyond all it can attain. Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.

A monomaniac is a sick person whose mentality is perfectly healthy in all respects but one; he has a single flaw, clearly localized. At times, for example, he has an unreasonable and absurd desire to drink or steal or use abusive language; but all his other acts and all his other thoughts are strictly correct.

If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.

Our excessive tolerance with regard to suicide is due to the fact that, since the state of mind from which it springs is a general one, we cannot condemn it without condemning ourselves; we are too saturated with it not partly to excuse it.