What makes us heroic?--Confronting simultaneously our supreme suffering and our supreme hope.

To the mediocre, mediocrity is a form of happiness.

Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing.

A lack of the historical sense is the hereditary fault of all philosophers.

To our strongest impulse, to the tyrant in us, not only our reason but also our conscience yields.

However modest one may be in one's demand for intellectual cleanliness, one cannot help feeling, when coming into contact with the New Testament, a kind of inexpressible discomfiture: for the unchecked impudence with which the least qualified want to raise their voice on the greatest problems, and even claim to be judges of such things, surpasses all measure. The shameless levity with which the most intractable problems (life, world, God, purpose of life) are spoken of, as if they were not problems at all but simply things that these little bigots knew!

There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom desistance from life must be preached.