There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy religions.
There are people who wish to make human life harder for no other reason than to be able afterwards to offer men their life-alleviating recipes their Christianity, for example.
The unreasonableness of a thing is no argument against its existence, but rather a condition thereof.
The distinction associated with unhappiness (as if it were a sign of stupidity, unambitiousness, or commonplaceness to feel happy) is so great that when any one says to us, “How happy you are!” we usually protest.
The demand to be loved is the greatest of presumptions.
The best friend will probably get the best wife, because a good marriage is based on talent for friendship.
The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.
Presumption in connection with merit offends us even more than presumption in persons devoid of merit, for merit in itself offends us.
Our destiny rules over us, even when we are not yet aware of it; it is the future that makes laws for our today.
One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and petty ones to fear.
Now every tradition grows continually more venerable, the farther off lies its origin, the more this is lost sight of; the generation paid it accumulates from generation to generation, the tradition at last becomes holy and excites awe.
Marriages which are contracted for love (so-called love-matches) have error for their father and need (necessity) for their mother.
