I acknowledge that four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what our soul is.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

In all the disputes which have excited Christians against each other, Rome has invariably decided in favor of that opinion which tended most towards the suppression of the human intellect and the annihilation of the reasoning powers.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.

I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?

If there are atheists, who is to be blamed if not the mercenary tyrants of souls who, in revolting us against their swindles, compel some feeble spirits to deny the God whom these monsters dishonour?