“Killing is decreed by law but nature loves eternal youth. Whatever she does, however unconscious and unfeeling the act, she seems to cry out: Quick! Quick! Quick! And the more she destroys, the mor...”

“Do you know how I picture God myself?" he said. "As an enormous, creative organ beyond our ken, who scatters millions of worlds into space, just as one single fish would deposit its spawn in the se...”

“Yes, but I say that Nature is our enemy, that we must always fight against Nature, for she is continually bringing us back to an animal state. You may be sure that God has not put anything on this ...”

“When the first fine spring days come, and the earth awakes and assumes its garment of verdure, when the perfumed warmth of the air blows on our faces and fills our lungs, and even appears to penetr...”

“There are some delightful places in this world which have a sensual charm for the eyes. One loves them with a physical love. We people who are attracted by the countryside cherish fond memories of ...”

“I told myself: 'I am surrounded by unknown things.' I imagined man without ears, suspecting the existence of sound as we suspect so many hidden mysteries, man noting acoustic phenomena whose nature...”

“They're going to get the death penalty. They'll be strung up and made to be laughed at out in the streets and made examples of!”

“It would take me a long time to understand how systems inflict pain and hardship in people's lives and to learn that being kind in an unjust system is not enough.”

“In any case, frequent punishments are a sign of weakness or slackness in the government. There is no man so bad that he cannot be made good for something. No man should be put to death, even as an ...”

“God and government can work together”

“When it comes down to it, government is simply an abandonment of responsibility on the assumption that there are people, other than ourselves, who really know how to manage things. But the governme...”

“In our country let us reject violence and selfishness which could destroy Nigeria unity.”

“I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa”

“At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

“I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”