Every virtue has its privilege: for example, that of contributing its own little bundle of wood to the funeral pyre of one condemned.

In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an assortment as he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience.

Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn't.

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

A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions.

The tragedy is that we cannot believe the dogmas of religion and metaphysics if we have the strict methods of truth in heart and head, but on the other hand, we have become through the development of humanity so tenderly suffering that we need the highest kind of means of salvation and consolation: whence arises the danger that man may bleed to death through the truth that he realises.

I might believe in the Redeemer if his followers looked more redeemed.