To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.

Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on.

I think that it is useless to fight directly against natural weaknesses. One has to force oneself to act as though one did not have them in circumstances where a duty makes it imperative; and in the ordinary course of life one has to know these weaknesses, prudently take them into account, and strive to turn them to good purpose; for they are all capable of being put to some good purpose.

Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.

The contradictions the mind comes up against, these are the only realities, the criterion of the real. There is no contradiction in what is imaginary. Contradiction is the test of necessity.

One does not play Bach without having done scales. But neither does one play a scale merely for the sake of the scale.

Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.