Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.

It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.

We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.

We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.

We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.

The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority.

The difficult and risky task of meeting and mastering the new . . . is not undertaken by the vanguard of society but by its rear. It is the misfits, failures, fugitives, outcasts and their like who are among the first to grapple with the new.