If it were desired to reduce man to nothing, it would be necessary only to give his work a character of uselessness

It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them -- the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.

He does not like showing his feelings and would rather do a cruel thing than open his heart freely.

And man has actually invented God. And what’s strange, what would be marvellous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man.

There are... things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.