It takes just such painful and terrible things to occur for the great emancipation to take place.

Invisible threads are the strongest ties.

All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.

As regards the celebrated struggle for life, it seems to me for the present to have been rather asserted than proved. It does occur, but as the exception; the general aspect of life is not hunger and distress, but rather wealth, luxury, even absurd prodigality -- where there is a struggle it is a struggle for power.

Pharisaism is not a degeneration in a good man: a large portion of it is rather the condition of all being-good.

There is a lake that one day refused to flow away and threw up a dam at the place where it had before flowed out and since then this lake has always risen higher and higher. Perhaps the very act of renunciation provides us with the strength to bear it ; perhaps man will rise ever higher and higher when he no longer flows out into a God.

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