The strongest knowledge (that of the total freedom of the human will) is nonetheless the poorest in successes: for it always has the strongest opponent, human vanity.
People who wish to numb our caution in dealing with them by means of flattery are employing a dangerous expedient, like a sleeping draught, which, if it does not put us to sleep, keeps us all the more awake.
The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.
Original minds are not distinguished by being the first to see a new thing, but instead by seeing the old, familiar thing that is over-looked as something new.
Christianity has a hunter's instinct for finding out all those who by one means or another may be driven to despair -although only a part of mankind is capable of such despair. Christianity lies in wait for such as those and pursues them
Intoxicating joy is it for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting, did the world once seem to me.
. . . an absurd problem came to the surface: 'How COULD God permit that (crucifixion of Jesus Christ)!' . . . the deranged reason of the little community found quite a frightfully absurd answer: God gave his Son for forgiveness, as a SACRIFICE . . . The SACRIFICE FOR GUILT, and just in its most repugnant and barbarous form - the sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What horrifying heathenism!