After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands

Was it not part of the secret black art of truly grand politics of revenge, of a farseeing, subterranean, slowly advancing, and premeditated revenge, that Israel must itself deny the real instrument of its revenge before all the world as a mortal enemy and nail it to the cross, so that 'all the world,' namely all the opponents of Israel, could unhesitatingly swallow just this bait? And could spiritual subtlety imagine any more dangerous bait than this? Anything to equal the enticing, intoxicating, overwhelming, and undermining power of that symbol of the 'holy cross,' that ghastly paradox of a 'God on the cross,' that mystery of an unimaginable ultimate cruelty and self-crucifixion of God for the salvation of man?

Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him.

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage

Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?

God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers -- at bottom, merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!