We deceive ourselves when giving respect to the person for whom we have surrendered ourselves, when we respectively expect them to be as we would wish them to be.

Every man has his price. This is not true. But for every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing. To win over certain people to something, it is only necessary to give it a gloss of love of humanity, nobility, gentleness, self-sacrifice - and there is nothing you cannot get them to swallow. To their souls, these are the icing, the tidbit; other kinds of souls have others.

His (the theologian) basic instinct of self preservation forbids him to respect reality at any point or even to let it get a word in.

Those who are bent on revolutionizing society may be divided into those who seek something for themselves thereby and those who seek something for their children and grandchildren.

That grand drama in a hundred acts, which is reserved for the next two centuries of Europe-the most terrible, most questionable and perhaps also the most hopeful of all dramas.

Whoever has overthrown an existing law of custom has always first been accounted a bad man: but when, as did happen, the law could not afterwards be reinstated and this fact was accepted, the predicate gradually changed; - history treats almost exclusively of these bad men who subsequently became good men!

A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.