Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.

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

Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.

Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.

Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.

To lose one's life is but to lose the present; and, clearly, to lose a defiled, worthless present is not to lose much.

Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.