In compassionate men, severity is a virtue.

As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.

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.

Do not be deceived! The busiest people harbor the greatest weariness, their restlessness is weakness--they no longer have the capacity for waiting and idleness.

The love of one sole being is a barbarism; for it will be employed to the detriment of all the rest. So too the love of God.

It is only possible through the fact that sympathy for the general life and suffering of mankind is very weakly developed in the individual.

The view that honesty is something, and even a virtue, belongs, it is true, to those private opinions which are forbidden in this age of public opinions.