The hour when you say, "What does my happiness matter? It is poverty and filth, and a wretched complacency. Yet my happiness should justify existence itself!

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

A few hours of mountain climbing make a blackguard and a saint two rather similar creatures.

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

Behind a remarkable scholar we not infrequently find an average human being, and behind an average artist we often find a very remarkable human being.

All religions bear traces of the fact that they arose during the intellectual immaturity of the human race - before it had learned the obligations to speak the truth. Not one of them makes it the duty of its god to be truthful and understandable in his communications.

Our knowledge will take its revenge on us, just as ignorance exacted its revenge during the Middle Ages.