I am alone again and I want to be so; alone with the pure sky and open sea.

My formula for happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.

There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance.

When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole. It stands or falls with faith in God.

But thought is one thing, the deed is another, and the image of the deed still another: the wheel of causality does not roll between them.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

All in all, punishment hardens and renders people more insensible; it concentrates; it increases the feeling of estrangement; it strengthens the power of resistance.