If not reason, then the devil.
If the person laughs well, they are a good person.
Atheism: It seeks to replace in itself the moral power of religion, in order to appease the spiritual thirst of parched humanity and save it; not by Christ, but by force.
People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that’s all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.
I know that you don’t believe it, but indeed, life will bring you through. You will live it down in time. What you need now is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air!
An artist must know the reality he is depicting in its minutest detail. In my opinion we have only one shining example of that – Count Leo Tolstoy.
Whatever distinguishes one lump of flesh from another when we’re alive, we’re all the same once we’re dead. Just used-up shells.
Life is in ourselves and not in the external.
Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we refuse to see it.
Only the heart knows how to find what is precious.
If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment-as well as the prison.
I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness- a real thorough-going illness.
What is most vile and despicable about money is that it even confers talent. And it will do so until the end of the world.
Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to re-open the wound.
Break what must be broken, once for all, that’s all, and take the suffering on oneself.
The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.
A new philosophy, a new way of life, is not given for nothing. It has to be paid dearly for and only acquired with much patience and great effort.
You can’t be angry with me, because I am a hundred times more severely punished than you, if only by the fact that I shall never see you again.
Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side.
Reason is the slave of passion.