The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.

Catastrophes come when some dominant institution, swollen like a soap-bubble and still standing without foundations, suddenly crumbles at the touch of what may seem a word or idea, but is really some stronger material source.

To be bewitched is not to be saved, though all the magicians and aesthetes in the world should pronounce it to be so.

Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.

If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved.

Lovely promise and quick ruin are seen nowhere better than in Gothic architecture.