And how would ye endure life without that hope, ye discerning ones? Neither in the inconceivable could ye have been born, nor in the irrational.

But that I may reveal my heart entirely unto you, my friends: if there were gods, how could I endure it to be no God! Therefore there are no Gods.

Yea, I have drawn the conclusion; now, however, doth it draw me.⁠—

God is a conjecture: but who could drink all the bitterness of this conjecture without dying? Shall his faith be taken from the creating one, and from the eagle his flights into eagle-heights?

God is a thought⁠—it maketh all the straight crooked, and all that standeth reel. What? Time would be gone, and all the perishable would be but a lie?