No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.

...throw roses into the abyss and say: 'here is my thanks to the monster who didn't succeed in swallowing me alive.

In short, then, the religious cult is based upon the representations of sorcery between man and man, and the sorcerer is older than the priest.

I feel all those human beings to be pernicious who can no longer oppose what they love: they thereby ruin the best things and people.

Because men really respect only that which was founded of old and has developed slowly, he who wants to live on after his death must take care not only of his posterity but even more of his past.

I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worse possible corruption. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul.

My humanity is a constant self-overcoming.