Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature

Sensuality often hastens the "Growth of Love" so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up.

The great advantage in noble parentage is that enables one to endure poverty more easily.

I am opposed to socialism because it dreams ingenuously of good, truth, beauty, and equal rights.

The less men are fettered by tradition, the greater becomes the inward activity of their motives, and greater again in proportion to their outer restlessness.

With the unknown, one is confronted with danger, discomfort, and care; the first instinct is to abolish these painful states. First principle: any explanation is better than none. . . . The causal instinct is thus conditional upon, and excited by, the feeling of fear. The "why?" shall, if at all possible, not give the cause for its own sake so much as for a particular kind of cause -- a cause that is comforting, liberating, and relieving.

Marriages that made out of love (so-called "love-matches") have error as their father and misery (necessity) as their mother.