The arrogance that accompanies merit offends us even more than the arrogance of people who are lacking in merit: since merit itself offends us.

It was Christianity, with its heartfelt resentment against life, that first made something unclean of sexuality: it threw filth on the origin, on the essential fact of our life.

Morality is neither rational nor absolute nor natural. World has known many moral systems, each of which advances claims universality; all moral systems are therefore particular, serving a specific purpose for their propagators or creators, and enforcing a certain regime that disciplines human beings for social life by narrowing our perspectives and limiting our horizons.

The criminal is quite frequently not equal to his deed: he belittles and slanders it.

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.

There is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity and Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of things, and thereby to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they find it difficult enough to live - this very difficulty being necessary.

Horrible experiences lead us to wonder whether the person who experiences them might not be something horrible.