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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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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Truth is not spoken in anger. Truth is spoken, if it ever comes to be spoken, in love. The gaze of love is not deluded. It sees what is best in the beloved even when what is best in the beloved finds it hard to emerge into the light.

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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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A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.

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

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Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt.

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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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Because a woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is a part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.

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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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