Only when man shall have acquired a knowledge of all things will he be able to know himself. For things are but the boundaries of man. 53
To whatever height mankind may have developed--and perhaps in the end it will not be so high as when they began!--there is as little prospect of their attaining to a higher order as there is for the ant and the earwig to enter into kinship with God and eternity at the end of their career on earth. What is to come will drag behind it that which has passed: why should any little star, or even any little species on that star, form an exception to that eternal drama? Away with such sentimentalities! 54
Those earnest, able, and just men of profound feelings, who are still Christians at heart, owe it to themselves to make one attempt to live for a certain space of time without Christianity! They owe it to _their faith_ that they should thus for once take up their abode "in the wilderness"--if for no other reason than that of being able to pronounce on the question as to whether Christianity is needful. 63
Christianity has the instinct of a hunter for finding out all those who may by hook or by crook be driven to despair--only a very small number of men can be brought to this despair. Christianity lies in wait for such as those, and pursues them. 65
The "demon" Eros becomes an object of greater interest to mankind than all the angels and saints put together, thanks to the mysterious Mumbo-Jumboism of the Church in all things erotic: it is due to the Church that love stories, even in our own time, have become the one common interest which appeals to all classes of people--with an exaggeration which would be incomprehensible to antiquity, and which will not fail to provoke roars of laughter in coming generations. 78
It is only those who never--or always--attend church that underestimate the dishonesty with which this subject is still dealt in Protestant pulpits; in what a clumsy fashion the preacher takes advantage of his security from interruption; how the Bible is pinched and squeezed; and how the people are made acquainted with every form of _the art of false reading._ 85
Christianity wants blindness and frenzy and an eternal swan-song above the waves under which reason has been drowned!... 90