Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

Error has made animals into men; is truth in a position to make men into animals again?

Look not into the sun! Even the moon is too bright for your nocturnal eyes!

All philosophers make the common mistake of taking contemporary man as their starting point and of trying, through an analysis of him, to[21] reach a conclusion. "Man" involuntarily presents himself to them as an aeterna veritas as a passive element in every hurly-burly, as a fixed standard of things. Yet everything uttered by the philosopher on the subject of man is, in the last resort, nothing more than a piece of testimony concerning man during a very limited period of time.

Whoever turns away from us might not offend us in doing so perhaps, but he certainly offends our followers.

Sins are indispensable to every society organized on an ecclesiastical basis; they are the only reliable weapons of power; the priest lives upon sins; it is necessary to him that there be sinning.

The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm: usually because they could not walk.