We defy augury. There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'Tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will's impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly.

Will power is only the tensile strength of one's own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.

Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.

The strongest knowledge (that of the total freedom of the human will) is nonetheless the poorest in successes: for it always has the strongest opponent, human vanity.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.