"We have seen that the vital longing for human immortality finds no consolation in reason and that reason leaves us without incentive or consolation in life and life itself without real finality. But here, in the depths of the abyss, the despair of the heart and of the will and the scepticism of reason meet face to face and embrace like brothers... Scepticism, uncertainty -- the position to which reason, by practising its analysis upon itself, upon its own validity, at last arives -- is the foundation upon which the heart's dispair must build up its hope." pp. 94
"We must make of [the war between our reason and our feelings], of war itself, the very condition of spiritual life." pp. 94
"[Life's] sole formula is: all or nothing. Feeling does not compound its differences with middle terms." pp. 95
"The methodical doubt of Descartes is ... purely theoretical and provisional... [Descartes] framed for himself a provisional ethic... the first law of which was to observe the customs of his country and to keep always to the religion in which, by the grace of God, he had been instructed from his infancy, governing himself in all things according to the most moderate opinions. Yes, exactly, a provisional religion and even a provisional God! And he chose the most moderate opinions 'because these are always the most convenient for practice.'" pp. 94-5
"[The] rationalist takes away our fever by taking away our life, and promises us, instead of a concrete, an abstract immortality, as if the hunger for immortality that consumes us were an abstract and not a concrete hunger!" pp. 98
"We shall see presently that to believe is, in the first instance, to wish to believe." pp. 100
"The will and the intelligence seek opposite ends: that we may absorb the world into ourselves, appropriate it to ourselves, is the aim of the will; that we may be absorbed into the world, that of the intelligence... The intelligence is monist or pantheist, the will monotheist or egoist." pp. 101
"[To] believe in the immortality of the soul is to wish that the soul may be immortal, but to wish it with such force that this volition shall trample reason under foot and pass beyond it. But reason has its revenge." pp. 102
"Nothing is sure. Everything is elusive and in the air." pp.104
"Because he believes--that is to say, because he wishes to believe, because he has need that his son should be cured--he beseeches the Lord to help his unbelief, his doubt that such a cure could be effectd. Of such kind is human faith" pp. 106
"Sufro yo a tu costa,
Dios no existiente, pues si tu' existieras
existieri'a yo tambien de veras." pp. 107
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