“Man follows only phantoms.”

“Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men -- the other 999 follow women.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

“There is only one man to follow me who has genius, and that is Edward German.”

Edward German (1862–1936) English musician and composer

“If religion is only human, and its form is man’s form, it follows that everything in religion is true.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

“He had followed the trail left by a dead man. It was only now that he realized it might lead only to a grave.”

Anthony Horowitz book Stormbreaker

“If I am the phantom, it is because man's hatred has made me so. If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me.”

Gaston Leroux book The Phantom of the Opera

“The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

“It is — last stage of all —
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

“But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion (compassion) or not.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him in ignorance of his real duties and true interests. It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of Religion, that we shall discover Truth, Reason, and Morality. Religion diverts us from the causes of evils, and from the remedies which nature prescribes; far from curing, it only aggravates, multiplies, and perpetuates them.”

Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist