There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their lusts are self-laceration.

Good writers have two things in common: they prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for knowing and over-acute readers.

To call a thing good not a day longer than it appears to us good, and above all not a day earlier - that is the only way to keep joy pure.

Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.

I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he as spirit over the bridge.

In order to acquire intellect one must need it. One loses it when it is no longer necessary.

Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature