Sadness does not inhere in things; it does not reach us from the world and through mere contemplation of the world. It is a product of our own thought. We create it out of whole cloth.

A monomaniac is a sick person whose mentality is perfectly healthy in all respects but one; he has a single flaw, clearly localized. At times, for example, he has an unreasonable and absurd desire to drink or steal or use abusive language; but all his other acts and all his other thoughts are strictly correct.

Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.

A society whose members are united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard to the sacred world and its relations with the profane world, and by the fact that they translate these common ideas into common practices, is what is called a Church. In all history, we do not find a single religion without a Church.

Each new generation is reared by its predecessor; the latter must therefore improve in order to improve its successor. The movement is circular.

If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.