Religion is the love of life in the consciousness of impotence.
All spiritual interests are supported by animal life.
To fight is a radical instinct; if men have nothing else to fight over they will fight over words, fancies, or women, or they will fight because they dislike each other’s looks, or because they have met walking in opposite directions.
The constant demands of the heart and the belly can allow man only an incidental indulgence in the pleasures of the eye and the understanding.
The works of nature first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke.
A body seriously out of equilibrium, either with itself or with its environment, perishes outright. Not so a mind. Madness and suffering can set themselves no limit.
It is one thing to lack a heart and another to possess eyes and a just imagination.
The Fates, like an absent-minded printer, seldom allow a single line to stand perfect and unmarred.
Man is a fighting animal; his thoughts are his banners, and it is a failure of nerve in him if they are only thoughts.
It is right to prefer our own country to all others, because we are children and citizens before we can be travellers or philosophers.
Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends.
Better not be a hero than work oneself up into heroism by shouting lies.
The soul, too has her virginity and must bleed a little before bearing fruit.
Religion should be disentangled as much as possible from history and authority and metaphysics, and made to rest honestly on one’s fine feelings, on one’s indomitable optimism and trust in life.
Religion is indeed a convention which a man must be bred in to endure with any patience; and yet religion, for all its poetic motley, comes closer than work-a-day opinion to the heart of things.
It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and the grace of it elude the stranger.
At best, the true philosopher can fulfil his mission very imperfectly, which is to pilot himself, or at most a few voluntary companions who may find themselves in the same boat.
A great man need not be virtuous, nor his opinions right, but he must have a firm mind, a distinctive luminous character.
Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.
The fly that prefers sweetness to a long life may drown in honey.