Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience.

You used the word "civilization", which means a set of abstractions, symbols, conventions. Experience tends to be vicarious; emotions are predigested and electrical; ideas become more real than things.

How to know, oh how to know! All is relative ease and facility in orthodoxy, yet how can it be denied that good is in itself undeniable? Absolutes are the most uncertain of all formulations, while the uncertainties are the most real.

What are your fees?" inquired Guyal cautiously. "I respond to three questions," stated the augur. "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue.

Human interactions, stimulated as they are by disequilibrium, never achieve balance. In even the most favorable transaction, one party whether he realizes it or not must always come out the worse.

Beauty compelled admiration and erotic yearning; such was its organic function. But never by itself could it command love.

I give dignity second place to expedience.