The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God.
The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.
If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.
It is by those who have suffered that the world has been advanced.
If you no longer believe in the God in whom you believed in before, this comes from the fact that there was something wrong with your belief, and you must strive to understand better that which you call God.
The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life.
War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.
A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.
If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve people. And in order to improve people, you begin with only ONE thing: you can become better yourself.
Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know.
Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people – that’s in your hands.
The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.
He never chooses an opinion; he just wears whatever happens to be in style.
And not only the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the dishonesty, yes, the dishonesty of intellect. Yes, indeed, the dishonesty and trickery of intellect.
The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase.
In a writer there must always be two people – the writer and the critic.
Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.
And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy.
Only greatly insolent people establish a religious law which is to be taken for granted by others, which should be accepted by everyone on faith, without any discussion or doubts. Why must people do this?