Government must be a transparent garment which tightly clings to the people's body.

The stars are scattered all over the sky like shimmering tears, there must be great pain in the eye from which they trickled.

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.

The strides of humanity are slow, they can only be counted in centuries.

Supreme power rests in the will of all or of the majority.

There is something beautiful about virtue, Captain. But I am just a poor guy.

The revolution must end and the republic must begin. In our constitution, right must take the place of duty, welfare that of virtue, and self-defense that of punishment. Everyone must be able to prevail and to live according to one's own nature.

Freedom and whores are the most cosmopolitan items under the sun. .

The weapon of the Republic is terror, and virtue is its strength.

We have not made the Revolution, the Revolution has made us.

In Germany, the judicial system has been the whore of the German princes for centuries.

People like us are unhappy in this world and in the next, I guess if we made it to heaven, we'd have to help make it thunder.

Whoever finishes a revolution only halfway, digs his own grave.

The world is chaos. Nothingness is the yet-to-be-born god of the world.

You women could make someone fall in love even with a lie.

Dying people often become childish.

The life of the wealthy is one long Sunday.

A good man with a good conscience doesn't walk so fast.

The statue of Freedom has not been cast yet, the furnace is hot, we can all still burn our fingers.

That is a long word: forever!

The breath of an aristocrat is the death rattle of freedom.

I'll know how to die with courage; that is easier than living.

Germany is now a field of cadavers, soon she will be a paradise.

Murder begins where self-defense ends.

One must love humanity in order to reach out into the unique essence of each individual: no one can be too low or too ugly.

How many women does one need to sing the scale of love all the way up and down?

Revolution is like Saturn, it devours its own children.

Revolution is like the daughters of Pelias: it cuts humanity to pieces in order to rejuvenate it.

The state is therefore everyone; the rules within the state are laws which safeguard the welfare of all and which must originate from the welfare of all.

We are always on stage, even when we are stabbed in earnest at the end.

Peace to the shacks! War on the palaces!

The death clock is ticking slowly in our breast, and each drop of blood measures its time, and our life is a lingering fever.

They say in the grave there is peace, and peace and the grave are one and the same.

The power of the people and the power of reason are one.

Brothers, love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labour. For we must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Everyone can love occasionally, even the wicked can.

To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.

There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God?

Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ.

They sang the praises of nature, of the sea, of the woods. They liked making songs about one another, and praised each other like children; they were the simplest songs, but they sprang from their hearts and went to one's heart. And not only in their songs but in all their lives they seemed to do nothing but admire one another. It was like being in love with each other, but an all-embracing, universal feeling.

'No one but you and one 'jade' I have fallen in love with, to my ruin. But being in love doesn't mean loving. You may be in love with a woman and yet hate her.

Fathers and teachers, I ponder, "What is hell?" I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.

If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God have pity upon you. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others.

Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain.

How it could come to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a sense of the whole. I only know that I was the cause of their sin and downfall. Like a vile trichina, like a germ of the plague infecting whole kingdoms, so I contaminated all this earth, so happy and sinless before my coming. They learnt to lie, grew fond of lying, and discovered the charm of falsehood.

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they've slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, 'Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!' And so it will be to the end of the world, even when gods disappear from the earth; they will fall down before idols just the same.

If there is no immortality, there is no virtue. ... Without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do what they like?

What terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people.'

If I seem happy to you . . . You could never say anything that would please me more. For men are made for happiness, and anyone who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find some one to worship.