“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, so all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals… What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to defer wise resolutions to the fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained.”

“If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can't deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.”

“Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

“There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.”

“When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.”

“Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.”

“Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad. ”

“You have to make it happen.”

“Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man.”

“Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.”

“Only passions, great passions can elevate the soul to great things.”