“The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.”

Love: To feel with one’s whole self the existence of another being.

One has only the choice between God and idolatry. There is no other possibility. For the faculty of worship is in us, and it is either directed somewhere into this world, or into another.

There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.

Purity is the ability to contemplate defilement.

The world is God’s language to us.

If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money.

Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.

A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.

When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.

The glossy surface of our civilization hides a real intellectual decadence.

Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.

It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people.

A man thinks he is dying for his country,” said Anatole France, “but he is dying for a few industrialists.” But even that is saying too much. What one dies for is not even so substantial and tangible as an industrialist.

I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.

Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.

For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation.

Wit is educated insolence.

We can get better results with ourselves and others by asking better questions.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

Anti-social behavior is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformists.

I do not believe in the God of the theologians; but that there is a Supreme Intelligence I do not doubt.

The motions which the planets now have could not spring from any natural cause alone, but were impressed by an intelligent agent.

It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.

Things may happen and often do to people as brainy and footsy as you.