“But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion (compassion) or not.”

“...the issue becomes not whether a person has experience with a stigma of his own, because he has, but rather how many varieties he has had his own experience with.”

“A man must choose his own way of life, and…it is only by following out one’s own bent that there can be the really harmonious life.” [In an interview conducted by Bram Stoker]”

“Each man cannot judge except by himself," he said, blushing. "There will be entire freedom when it makes no difference whether one lives or does not live. That is the goal to everything.""The goal? But then perhaps no one will even want to live?""No one," he said resolutely."Man is afraid of death because he loves life, that's how I understand it," I observed, "and that is what nature tells us.""That is base, that is the whole deceit!" his eyes began to flash. "Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Now all is pain and fear. Now man loves life because he loves pain and fear. That's how they've made it. Life now is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that is the whole deceit. Man now is not yet the right man. There will be a new man, happy and proud. He for whom it will make no difference whether he lives or does not live, he will be the new man. He who overcomes pain and fear will himself be God. And this God will not be.”

“A man must be disposed to judge of emancipation by other tests than whether it has increased the produce of sugar,—and to hate slavery for other reasons than because it starves men and whips women,—before he is ready to lay the first stone of his anti-slavery life.”

“..The argument he was conducting with his neighbor as to whether the English magician had gone mad because he was a magician, or because he was English.”