I have been tortured with longing to believe ... and the yearning grows stronger the more cogent the intellectual difficulties stand in the way.

If there is no God, then I am God.

A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever.

How does it come about that what an intelligent man expresses is much stupider than what remains inside him?

And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive--in other words, only what is conducive to welfare--is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact.