As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.

What does it matter whether I am shown to be right! I am right too much!--And he who laughs best today will also laugh last.

This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves.

We laugh at a man who, stepping out of his room at the very minute when the sun is rising, says, “It is my will that the sun shall rise”; or at him who, unable to stop a wheel, says, “I wish it to roll”; or, again, at him who, thrown in a wrestling match, says, “Here I lie, but here I wish to lie.” But, joking apart, do we not act like one of these three persons whenever we use the expression “I wish”?

Death is close enough at hand so we do not need to be afraid of life.

Pity makes suffering contagious.

Linguistic danger to spiritual freedom.- Every word is a prejudice.