Religion can emerge in all forms of feeling: here wild anger, there the sweetest pain; here consuming hatred, there the childlike smile of serene humility.

Man is free whenever he produces or manifests God, and through this he becomes immortal.

Imagination must first be filled to the point of saturation with life of every kind before the moment arrives when the friction of free sociability electrifies it to such an extent that the most gentle stimulus of friendly or hostile contact elicits from it lightning sparks, luminous flashes, or shattering blows.

Mysteries are feminine; they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined.

Novels tend to end as the Paternoster begins: with the kingdom of God on earth.

If the essence of cynicism consists in preferring nature to art, virtue to beauty and science; in not bothering about the letter of things -- to which the Stoic strictly adheres -- but in looking up to the spirit of things; in absolute contempt of all economic values and political splendor, and in courageous defence of the rights of independent freedom; then Christianity would be nothing but universal cynicism.

If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry.