Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

Freethinkers are occasionally thoughtful, though never free.

There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners.

Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.

When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress.

According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.

The lunatic is the man who lives in a small world but thinks it is a large one; he is the man who lives in a tenth of the truth, and thinks it is the whole. The madman cannot conceive any cosmos outside a certain tale or conspiracy or vision.