There is a universal need to exercise some kind of power, or to create for one's self the appearance of some power, if only temporarily, in the form of intoxication.

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!

What do we have in common with the rosebud, which trembles because a drop of dew lies on its body?

It is the music in our conscience, the dance in our spirit, to which Puritan litanies, moral sermons, and goody goodness won’t chime.

Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me.

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.

Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.