Without poetry, religion becomes obscure, false, and malignant; without philosophy, licentious in all wantonness, and lascivious to the point of self-castration.

God is each truly and exalted thing, therefore the individual himself to the highest degree. But are not nature and the world individuals?

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.

Religion is not only a part of education, an element of humanity, but the center of everything else, always the first and the ultimate, the absolutely original.

The need to raise itself above humanity is humanity's main characteristic.

Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.

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.