You have doubts? About what? About whom? About God? Why, that's a very simple matter: write to him.—I haven't his address.—Such, in fact, is the state of the question.
Revolutionary socialists make me think of the fellow who, having a piano that was out of tune, would say: "Let's smash this piano and throw the pieces into the fire; in its place we'll install an Aeolian harp."
Christianity has already won three great victories: Constantine, the Reform, the Revolution. A fourth is being awaited, Collectivism, after which it is probable that the Strong, wearied at last of being bullied, will revolt against the Weak and reduce them to slavery—once again.
Property is necessary; but it is not necessary that it should forever remain in the same hands.
To ameliorate and raise the standard of the workingmen to the bourgeois level, is perhaps to create a race of slaves content with their lot,—a cast of comfortable Pariahs.
Thought harms the loins. One cannot at the same time carry burdens and ideas.
Said Sixtus: "Believe in nothing, not even the trade you follow, not even the hand you caress, the eyes in which you are mirrored, not even yourself,—above all, not in yourself."
The true philosopher does not desire to see his ideas applied. He knows that they would be ill carried out, deformed, vulgarized. If need be, he would actually oppose such a course: this has happened.
Modesty is a timid confession of pride.
The ill are always optimistic. Perhaps optimism itself is an illness.