To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.

Purity is the power to contemplate defilement.

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.

Fire destroys that which feeds it.

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

Contradiction itself, far from always being a criterion of error, is sometimes a sign of truth.

War is the supreme form of prestige.