(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")

Most creatures have a vague belief that a very precarious hazard, a kind of transparent membrane, divides death from love; and that the profound idea of nature demands that the giver of life should die at the moment of giving.

Our reason may prove what it will: our reason is only a feeble ray that has issued from Nature.

You do well to have visions of a better life than of every day, but it is the life of every day from which the elements of a better life must come.

There is no soul that does not respond to love, for the soul of man is a guest that has gone hungry these centuries back.

All mothers are rich when they love their children. There are no poor mothers, no ugly ones, no old ones. Their love is always the most beautiful of joys.

Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention.