History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten. ...What is interesting is brought forward as if it had been central and efficacious in the march of events, and harmonies are turned into causes. Kings and generals are endowed with motives appropriate to what the historian values in their actions; plans are imputed to them prophetic of their actual achievements, while the thoughts that really preoccupied them remain buried in absolute oblivion.

Man is a fighting animal; his thoughts are his banners, and it is a failure of nerve in him if they are only thoughts.

Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They all may collapse altogether.

Man has an inexhuastible faculty for lying, especially to himself.

A fanatical imagination cannot regard God as just unless he is represented as infinitely cruel.

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

What is more important in life than our bodies or in the world than what we look like?