A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself.
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Emile Zola was a poor student at his school at Aix. We are all so different largely because we all have different combinations of intelligences. If we recognize this, I think we will have at least a better chance of dealing appropriately with many problems that we face in the world.
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What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us his?
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What surrounds us we endure better for giving it a name - and moving on.
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It is too great comfort which turns a man against himself. Life is most readily renounced at the time and among the classes where it is least harsh.
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While the State becomes inflated and hypertrophied in order to obtain a firm enough grip upon individuals, but without succeeding, the latter, without mutual relationships, tumble over one another like so many liquid molecules, encountering no central energy to retain, fix and organize them.
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Each victim of suicide gives his act a personal stamp which expresses his temperament, the special conditions in which he is involved, and which, consequently, cannot be explained by the social and general causes of the phenomenon.
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Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us.
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Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.
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Man's characteristic privilege is that the bond he accepts is not physical but moral; that is, social. He is governed not by a material environment brutally imposed on him, but by a conscience superior to his own, the superiority of which he feels. Because the greater, better part of his existence transcends the body, he escapes the body's yoke, but is subject to that of society.
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In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.
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One cannot long remain so absorbed in contemplation of emptiness without being increasingly attracted to it. In vain one bestows on it the name of infinity; this does not change its nature. When one feels such pleasure in non-existence, one's inclination can be completely satisfied only by completely ceasing to exist.
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Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in.
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The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.
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The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings. If he loves, it is not to give himself, to blend in fecund union with another being, but to meditate on his love. His passions are mere appearances, being sterile. They are dissipated in futile imaginings, producing nothing external to themselves.
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From top to bottom of the ladder, greed is aroused without knowing where to find ultimate foothold. Nothing can calm it, since its goal is far beyond all it can attain. Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.
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Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.
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Everything is pathology, except for indifference.
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Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.
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A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.
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The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth.
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Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.
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Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, Chaos is being yourself.
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Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.
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A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.
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A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.
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Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an imposter.
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Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires.
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A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions.
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The more we try to rest ourselves from our Egos, the deeper we sink into it.
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