I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats.

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You are going to end up as one of those sad old men who poke around in rubbish bins.

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Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?

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If we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.

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Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of dependent people, I decided, I was opposed to civilization.

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I am not the we of anyone.

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We must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable.

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Was it serious? I don't know. It certainly had serious consequences.

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Sleep is no longer a healing bath, a recuperation of vital forces, but an oblivion, a nightly brush with annihilation.

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Poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response.

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