A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a symptom of meagerness.

A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion. According to Renan, "The day after that on which the world should no longer believe in God, atheists would be the wretchedest of all men."

Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.

Sometimes we feel the loss of a prejudice as a loss of vigor.

Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from freedom."