What do you think most humane ?-To spare a person shame.

French philosopher whom professional philosophers generally accord highest honors is Descartes. Montaigne and Pascal, Voltaire and Rousseau, Bergson and Sartre do not enjoy their greatest vogue among philosophers, and of these only Rousseau has had any considerable influence on the history of philosophy (through Kant and Hegel).

Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health...

And others are proud of their modicum of righteousness, and for the sake of it do violence to all things: so that the world is drowned in their unrighteousness.

Christianity is the metaphysics of the hangman.

The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one attains with it, but in what one pays for it - what it costs us.

Men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy: they have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and strangle it, out of jealousy--ah, they know only too well that it will flee from them!

On a political sickbed a people is usually rejuvenated and rediscovers its spirit, after having gradually lost it in seeking and preserving power. Culture owes its peaks to politically weak ages.

Aren't we straying as though through an infinite nothing? Isn't empty space breathing at us?

The pure soul is a pure lie.