The truth is that my work - I was going to say my mission - is to shatter the faith of men here, there, and everywhere, faith in affirmation, faith in negation, and faith in abstention in faith, and this for the sake of faith in faith itself; it is to war against all those who submit, whether it be to Catholicism, or to rationalism, or to agnosticism; it is to make all men live the life of inquietude and passionate desire.

To love with the spirit is to pity, and he who pities most loves most.

Hell has been conceived as a police institution, to inspire fear in this world. But the worst of it all is that it no longer frightens anyone, and therefore it will have to be closed down.

Man habitually sacrifices his life to his purse, but he sacrifices his purse to his vanity.

What is certain is that for thinking believers to-day, faith is, before all and above all, wishing that God may exist.

The chiefest sanctity of a temple is that it is a place to which men go to weep in common.

Science is the most intimate school of resignation and humility, for it teaches us to bow before the seemingly most insignificant of facts.