in pace , these dungeons, these iron hinges, these necklets, that lofty peephole on a level with the river’s current, that box of stone closed with a lid of granite like a tomb, with this difference, that the dead man here was a living being, that soil which is but mud, that vault hole, those oozing walls⁠—what declaimers!

On What Conditions One Can Respect the Past

Monasticism, such as it existed in Spain, and such as it still exists in Tibet, is a sort of phthisis for civilization. It stops life short. It simply depopulates. Claustration, castration. It has been the scourge of Europe. Add to this the violence so often done to the conscience, the forced vocations, feudalism bolstered up by the cloister, the right of the firstborn pouring the excess of the family into monasticism, the ferocities of which we have just spoken, the in pace