First... a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.

To suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o'er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is.

Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us; our hour of triumph is what brings the void.

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.

When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.

Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him.

We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly - the more athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape.