“Human beings, in other words, are always already dead. This proleptic knowledge of finitude predetermines their most creative as well as their most destructive dispositions.”

“The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge–a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.”

“In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like.”

“Judging oneself to be inferior to other people was one of the worst acts of pride because it was the most destructive way of being different.”

“On the basis of the eternal will of God we have to think of EVERY HUMAN BEING, even the oddest, most villainous or miserable, as one to whom Jesus Christ is Brother and God is Father; and we have to deal with him on this assumption. If the other person knows that already, then we have to strengthen him in the knowledge. If he does no know it yet or no longer knows it, our business is to transmit this knowledge to him.”

“Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.”