I feel a complete thirst for knowledge and an eager unrest to go further in it as well as satisfaction at every acquisition. There was a time when I believed that this alone could constitute the honor of mankind, and I had contempt for the ignorant rabble who know nothing.
It is ourselves alone that make our days lucky or unlucky. Away, then, with a vain prejudice, the invention of the priesthood, which has been transmitted by our ancestors to an ignorant people.
Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.
Virtue is always too much of a piece and too ignorant of those shades of feeling and of temperament that enable us to squint when we are placed in a false position.
We are merely instruments of the Almighty's will and therefore ignorant of what helps us forward and what acts as an impediment. We must thus rest satisfied with the knowledge only of the means and if these are pure, we can fearlessly leave the end to take care of itself.