At every crossway on the path that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past. Let us have no fear that the fair towers of former days be sufficiently defended. The least that the most timid among us can do is not to add to the immense dead weight that nature drags along.

It is the evil that lies in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that dwells within others.

An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.

The true sage is not he who sees, but he who, seeing the furthest, has the deepest love for mankind.

It is death that is the guide of our life, and our life has no goal but death.

(there is) no other means of escaping from one's consciousness than to deny it, to look upon it as an organic disease of the terrestrial intelligence - a disease which we must endeavor to cure by an action which must appear to us an action of violent and willful madness, but which, on the other side of our appearances, is probably an action of health. ("Of Immortality")

We are never the same with others as when we are alone. We are different, even when we are in the dark with them.