“Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.”

Even one well-made observation will be enough in many cases, just as one well-constructed experiment often suffices for the establishment of a law.

Each new generation is reared by its predecessor; the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.

The Christian conceives of his abode on Earth in no more delightful colors than the Jainist sectarian. He sees in it only a time of sad trial; he also thinks that his true country is not of this world.

If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.

Man is only a moral being because he lives in society, since morality consists in solidarity with the group, and varies according to that solidarity. Cause all social life to vanish, and moral life would vanish at the same time, having no object to cling to.

It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.

When man discovered the mirror, he began to lose his soul.

The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings. His passions are mere appearances, being sterile. They are dissipated in futile imaginings, producing nothing external to themselves.

When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary; when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.

Maniacal suicide. -This is due to hallucinations or delirious conceptions. The patient kills himself to escape from an imaginary danger or disgrace, or to obey a mysterious order from on high, etc.

To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.

A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.

Melancholy suicide. – This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract.

The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.

A monomaniac is a sick person whose mentality is perfectly healthy in all respects but one; he has a single flaw, clearly localized. At times, for example, he has an unreasonable and absurd desire to drink or steal or use abusive language; but all his other acts and all his other thoughts are strictly correct.

By definition, sacred beings are separated beings. That which characterizes them is that there is a break of continuity between them and the profane beings.

This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed.

Who falls from all he knows of bliss, Cares little into what abyss.

The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.

It is neither easy nor agreeable to dredge this abyss of viciousness, and yet I think it must be done, because what could be perpetrated yesterday could be attempted again tomorrow, could overwhelm us and our children.

Infinity imagines curiosity from the wild abyss – Only the child makes a swing-set view of the worlds upside down.

Awareness naturally returns to its non-state of absolute unmanifest potential, the silent abyss beyond all knowing.

Yet the abyss is not not infinite; its bottom may suddenly be discovered within the confines of a human heart or under the debris of might doubts.

The anchor of meaning resides in an abyss, deeper than the reach of despair.