There is nothing truly real, save that which feels, suffers, pities, loves and desires, save consciousness. And we need God in order to save consciousness; not in order to think existence, but in order to live it; not in order to know the why and how of it, but in order to feel the wherefore of it.
What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.
The devil is an angel too.
For it is the suffering flesh, it is suffering, it is death, that lovers perpetuate upon the earth. Love is at once the brother, son, and father of death, which is its sister, mother, and daughter. And thus it is that in the depth of love there is a depth of eternal despair, out of which spring hope and consolation.
The mists remain of the false glory that erupts from history.
Use harms and even destroys beauty. The noblest function of an object is to be contemplated.
The wretched consciousness shrinks from it own annihilation, and just as an animal spirit newly severed from the womb of the world, finds itself confronted with the world and knows itself distinct from it, so consciousness must needs desire to possess another life than that of the world itself.
Reason perhaps teaches certain bourgeois virtues, but it does not make either heroes or saints.
These terrible sociologists, who are the astrologers and alchemists of our twentieth century.
Uncertainty, doubt, perpetual wrestling with the mystery of our final destiny, mental despair, and the lack of any solid and stable foundation, may be the basis of an ethic.