A great classic means a man whom one can praise without having read.

Instead of looking at books and pictures about the New Testament I looked at the New Testament. There I found an account, not in the least of a person with his hair parted in the middle or his hands clasped in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder and acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils, passing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a sort of dreadful demagogy; a being who often acted like an angry god — and always like a god.

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since.

Criticism is only words about words, and of what use are words about such words as these?

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.