Ideas that have outlived their day may hobble about the world for years, but it is hard for them ever to lead or dominate life. Such ideas never gain complete possession of a man, or they gain possession only of incomplete people.
Strong drink stupefies a man and makes it possible for him to forget; it gives him an artificial cheeriness, an artificial excitement; and the pleasure of this state is increased by the low level of civilization and the narrow empty life to which these men are confined.
It must not be thought that the cowardly feeling of caution and uneasy self-preservation is innate in the English character. It is the consequence of a corpulence derived from wealth and of the training of all thoughts and passions for acquisitiveness.
History knocks at a thousand gates at every moment, and the gatekeeper is chance. We shout into the mist for this one or that one to be opened for us, but through every gate are a thousand more. We need wit and courage to make our way while our way is making us.
All religions have based morality on obedience, that is to say, on voluntary slavery. That is why they have always been more pernicious than any political organization. For the latter makes use of violence, the former – of the corruption of the will.
We could hardly believe that after so many ordeals, after all the trials of modern skepticism, there was still so much left in our souls to destroy.
Human development is a form of chronological unfairness, since late-comers are able to profit by the labors of their predecessors without paying the same price.
False gods must be repudiated, but that is not all: The reasons for their existence must be sought beneath their masks.
Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.
Compassionate love may be strong. It sobs, it burns, then it wipes away its tears – and it does nothing.
Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood.
We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation.
Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men.
Would it be possible to stand still on one spot more majestically – while simulating a triumphant march forward – than it is done by the two English Houses of Parliament?
The Russian system of justice and police is so haphazard, so inhuman, so arbitrary and corrupt, that a poor malefactor has more reason to fear his trial than his sentence. He is impatient for the time when he will be sent to Siberia; for his martyrdom comes to an end when his punishment begins.
We are not the doctors. We are the disease.
To see oneself in print is one of the strongest artificial passions of an age corrupted by books. But it requires courage, nevertheless, to venture on a public exhibition of one’s productions.
You can awaken people by dreaming their dreams more clearly than they dream themselves.
Together with a monopoly in everything else, the Government in Russia has assumed a monopoly of nonsense; ordering everyone to be silent, it chatters itself without ceasing.
To comprehend... the full sanctity, the full breadth and reality of the individual’s rights and not to destroy society, not to shatter it into atoms, is the most difficult of tasks. It has never been resolved by any historical systems in the past; for that one needs a great maturity, which mankind has not yet attained.