To see helpless infancy stretching out her hands, and pouring out her cries in testimony of dependence, without any powers to alarm jealousy, or any guilt to alienate affection, must surely awaken tenderness in every human mind; and tenderness once excited will be hourly increased by the natural contagion of felicity, by the repercussion of communicated pleasure, by the consciousness of dignity of benefaction.
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War is a contagion.
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As contagion of sickness makes sickness, contagion of trust can make trust.
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As for flesh, true, indeed, is it that man is sustained on flesh. But how many things, let me ask, does man do every day which are contrary to, or beside, his nature? So great, and so general, is the perversion of his mode of life, which has, as it were, eaten into his flesh by a sort of deadly contagion, that he appears to have put on another disposition. Hence, the whole care and concern of philosophy and moral instruction ought to consist in leading men back to the paths of Nature. Man lives very well upon flesh, you say, but, if he thinks this food to be natural to him, why does he not use it as it is, as furnished to him by Nature? But, in fact, he shrinks in horror from seizing and rending living or even raw flesh with his teeth, and lights a fire to change its natural and proper condition
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A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement -- in a word, with more renunciation than you care for -- and so you flee the contagion.
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If you had the seeds of pestilence in your body you would not have a more active contagion that you have in your tempers, tastes, and principles. Simply to be in this world, whatever you are, is to exert an influence, compared with which mere language and persuasion are feeble.
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Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.
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The deadliest contagion is majority opinion.
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Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.
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