There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, and, of its many rungs, three are the most important. People used to make human sacrifices to their god, perhaps even sacrificing those they loved the best ... Then, during the moral epoch of humanity, people sacrificed the strongest instincts they had, their 'nature,' to their god... Finally: what was left to be sacrificed? ... Didn't people have to sacrifice God himself and worship rocks, stupidity, gravity, fate, or nothingness out of sheer cruelty to themselves?

That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good - the atavism of an old ideal.

What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives acts and experiences otherwise than we do?

The person lives most beautifully who does not reflect upon existence

Some rule out of a lust for ruling; others, so as not to be ruled:Mto these it is merely the lesser of two evils.

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There is something ticklish in "the truth," and in the SEARCH for the truth; and if man goes about it too humanely-"il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien"-I wager he finds nothing!