Respectability offends my taste.

Out of damp and gloomy days, out of solitude, out of loveless words directed at us, conclusions grow up in us like fungus: one morning they are there, we know not how, and they gaze upon us, morose and gray. Woe to the thinker who is not the gardener but only the soil of the plants that grow in him.

A book full of brilliance imparts some of it even to its opponents.

We criticize a man or a book most sharply when we sketch out their ideal.

What is more harmful than any vice? Practical sympathy and pity for all the failures and all the weak : Christianity.

Strength is the morality of the man who stands out from the rest, and it is mine.

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.