Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.

There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper.

Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.

There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutionsto cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.

A peculiar side of credulity is that it is often joined with a proneness to imposture. The association of believing and lying is not characteristic solely of children. They inability or unwillingness to see things as they are promotes both gullibility and charlatanism.