It is not in our hands to prevent our birth; but we can correct this mistake – for in some cases it is a mistake.
The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us.
Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups.
In a man devoted to knowledge, pity seems almost ridiculous, like delicate hands on a cyclops.
What is the task of higher education? To make a man into a machine. What are the means employed? He is taught how to suffer being bored.
Not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love, prevents the Christians of today – burning us.
If that glad message of your Bible were written in your faces, you would not need to demand belief in the authority of that book in such stiff-necked fashion.
When on a Sunday morning we hear the old bells ring out, we ask ourselves, “Is it possible! This is done on account of a Jew crucified two thousand years ago who said he was the Son of God. The proof of such an assertion is wanting”.
Buddhism is a hundred times as realistic as Christianity it is part of its living heritage that it is able to face problems objectively and coolly; it is the product of long centuries of philosophical speculation.
What was formerly merely sickly now becomes indecent : it is indecent to be a Christian today.
For this remains as I have already pointed out the essential difference between the two religions of decadence : Buddhism promises nothing, but actually fulfils; Christianity promises everything, but fulfils nothing.
Principle of “Christian love”: it insists upon being well paid in the end.
One cannot read the New Testament without acquired admiration for whatever it abuses not to speak of the “wisdom of this world,” which an impudent wind bag tries to dispose of “by the foolishness of preaching.”
If Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is dealing with men.
Christianity, alcohol – the two great means of corruption.
It was Christianity, with its heartfelt resentment against life, that first made something unclean of sexuality: it threw filth on the origin, on the essential fact of our life.
But this people has deliberately made itself stupid, for nearly a millennium: nowhere have the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been abused more dissolutely.
Our destiny rules over us, even when we are not yet aware of it; it is the future that makes laws for our today.
Who has not for the sake of his reputation sacrificed himself?
For our self respect depends upon our ability to make requital, for good or for evil.