You talk of our having an idea; we do not have an idea. The idea has us, and martyrs us, and scourges us, and drives us into the arena to fight and die for it, whether we want to or not.

If you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe.

I fell asleep reading a dull book and dreamed I kept on reading, so I awoke from sheer boredom.

A blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle more pleasing to the Lord than a praying Englishman.

At noon I feel as though I could devour all the elephants of Hindostan, and then pick my teeth with the spire of Strasburg cathedral; in the evening I become so sentimental that I would fain drink up the Milky Way without reflecting how indigestible I should find the little fixed stars, and by night there is the Devil himself broke loose in my head and no mistake.

There is only one writer in whom I find something that reminds me of the directness of style which is found in the Bible. It is Shakespeare.

God will forgive me. It's his job." Heine said this on his deathbed (1856). Hilarious. He must have thought that up years before and counted the seconds to use it.