Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away.... To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.

In its most general form, confinement was explained, or at least justified, by a will to avoid scandal. It thereby signalled an important change in the consciousness of evil. The Renaissance had let unreason in all its forms come out into the light of day, as public exposure gave evil the chance to redeem itself and to serve as an exemplum.

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

We are He, since we are His body and since He was made man in order to be our Head.

This is a strange -- and rather alarming -- realisation. For it clearly implies that masturbation is one of our highest faculties that human beings have developed. Many animals masturbate -- but never without the presence of another animal, or some similar stimulus. A human being can masturbate in an empty room: a triumph of pure imagination.

Is not every true Reformer, by the nature of him, a Priest first of all? He appeals to Heaven's invisible justice against Earth's visible force; knows that it, the invisible, is strong and alone strong. He is a believer in the divine truth of things; a seer, seeing through the shows of things; a worshipper, in one way or the other, of the divine truth of things; a Priest, that is. If he be not first a Priest, he will never be good for much as a Reformer.

It is easy to follow in the sacred writings of the Jewish people the development of the religion of fear into the moral religion, which is carried further in the New Testament. The religions of all civilized peoples, especially those of the Orient, are principally moral religions. An important advance in the life of a people is the transformation of the religion of fear into the moral religion. But one must avoid the prejudice that regards the religions of primitive peoples as pure fear religions and those of the civilized races as pure moral religions. All are mixed forms, though the moral element predominates in the higher levels of social life.

Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last.

We are not that we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for that we are capable of being.

All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development-in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver-but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology.

See now the power of truth; the same experiment which at first glance seemed to show one thing, when more carefully examined, assures us of the contrary.

The student should have enough knowledge of his or her cultural tradition to know how it got to be the way it is. This involves both political and social history, on the one hand, as well as the mastery of some of the great philosophical and literary texts of the culture on the other. It involves reading not only texts that are of great value, like those of Plato, but many less valuable that have been influential, such as the works of Marx. For the United States, the dominant tradition is, and for the foreseeable future, will remain the European tradition. The United States is, after all, a product of the European Enlightenment. However, you do not understand your own tradition if you do not see it in relation to others. Works from other cultural traditions need to be studied as well.

Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

I will not accept boundaries; appearances cannot contain me; I choke! To bleed in this agony, and to live it profoundly, is the second duty. The mind is patient and adjusts itself, it likes to play; but the heart grows savage and will not condescend to play; it stifles and rushes to tear apart the nets of necessity.

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.

Men have fashioned an image of Chance as an excuse for their own stupidity. For Chance rarely conflicts with intelligence, and most things in life can be set in order by an intelligent sharpsightedness.

How abundantly do spiritual beings display the powers that belong to them! We look for them, but do not see them; we listen to, but do not hear them; yet they enter into all things, and there is nothing without them.

I shall doubtless outlive some troublesome desires; but I am in no hurry about that; nor, when the time comes, shall I plume myself on the immunity just in the same way, I do not greatly pride myself on having outlived my belief in the fairy tales of Socialism. Old people have faults of their own; they tend to become cowardly, niggardly, and suspicious. Whether from the growth of experience or the decline of animal heat, I see that age leads to these and certain other faults; and it follows, of course, that while in one sense I hope I am journeying towards the truth, in another I am indubitably posting towards these forms and sources of error.

Success makes some crimes honorable.

We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. ... We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. . . We must recover the sense of the majesty of the creation and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.

Instinctively we divide mankind into friends and foes - friends, towards whom we have the morality of co-operation; foes, towards whom we have that of competition. But this division is constantly changing; at one moment a man hates his business competitor, at another, when both are threatened by Socialism or by an external enemy, he suddenly begins to view him as a brother. Always when we pass beyond the limits of the family it is the external enemy which supplies the cohesive force. In times of safety we can afford to hate our neighbour, but in times of danger we must love him.

By all means begin your folio; even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week.

The death of Alexander (323 BC) quickened this process of decay. The boy-emperor, barbarian though he remained after all of Aristotle's tutoring, had yet learned to revere the rich culture of Greece, and had dreamed of spreading that culture through the Orient in the wake of his victorious armies.... But he had underrated the inertia and resistance of the Oriental mind, and the mass and depth of Oriental culture. It was only a youthful fancy, after all, to suppose that so immature and unstable a civilization as that of Greece could be imposed upon a civilization immeasurably more widespread, and rooted in the most venerable traditions. The quantity of Asia proved too much for the quality of Greece.

I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.

Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling. ... identification of rhythm as the causal counterpart of life; wherever there is some life, only perceptible to us when the analogies are sufficiently close ... The rhythm is then the life, in the sense in which it can be said to be included within nature.

The difference between a pessimistic and an optimistic mind is of such controlling importance in regard to every intellectual function, and especially for the conduct of life, that it is out of the question to admit that both are normal, and the great majority of mankind are naturally optimistic.

The institution of religion exists only to keep mankind in order, and to make men merit the goodness of God by their virtue. Everything in a religion which does not tend towards this goal must be considered foreign or dangerous.

Decisive actions are often taken in a moment and without any conscious deliverance from the rational parts of man.

I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.

All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.

One does not decide the truth of a thought according to whether it is right-wing or left-wing.

The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom.

Dualism makes the problem insoluble; materialism denies the existence of any phenomenon to study, and hence of any problem.

Condemn me if you choose - I do that myself, - but condemn me, and not the path which I am following, and which I point out to those who ask me where, in my opinion, the path is.

From all these indignities, such as the very beasts of the field would not endure, you can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free.

The man of science who commits himself to even one statement which turns out to be devoid of good foundation loses somewhat of his reputation among his fellows, and if he be guilty of the same error often he loses not only his intellectual, but his moral standing among them. For it is justly felt that errors of this kind have their root rather in the moral than in the intellectual nature.

Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue. 

Each such answer to the great question, invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, or it may be for twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth-tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors.

Whoever abhors the name and fancies that he is godless - when he addresses with his whole devoted being the Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other, he addresses God.

For already, sometime, I have been a boy and a girl, a shrub, a bird, and a silent fish in the sea.

Throughout the years in which the US was punishing countries that departed from fiscal prudence, it was borrowing on a colossal scale to finance tax cuts and fund its over-stretched military commitments. Now, with federal finances critically dependent on continuing large inflows of foreign capital, it will be the countries that spurned the American model of capitalism that will shape America's economic future.

Whether or no it be for the general good, life is robbery. It is at this point that with life morals become acute. The robber requires justification.

The acts of France were acts of hostility to this country; her whole system, every speech, every decree, every act, bespoke an intention preclusive of accommodation. No man, he would venture to say, had a more lively sense of the importance of the question before the House, or of the evils of war, than himself. A war with France, under such circumstances as now governed her conduct, must be terrible, but peace much more so. A nation that had abandoned all its valuable distinctions, arts, sciences, religion, law order, every thing but the sword, was most formidable and dreadful to all nations composed of citizens who only used soldiers as a defence; as such, France should be resisted with spirit and temper, without fear or scruple.

Political Economy regards the proletarian ... like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being. It leaves this to criminal law, doctors, religion, statistical tables, politics, and the beadle. ... (1) What is the meaning, in the development of mankind, of this reduction of the greater part of mankind to abstract labor? (2) What mistakes are made by the piecemeal reformers, who either want to raise wages and thereby improve the situation of the working class, or - like Proudhon - see equality of wages as the goal of social revolution?.