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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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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Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in.
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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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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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Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.
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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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In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.
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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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Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.
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Everything is pathology, except for indifference.
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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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Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, Chaos is being yourself.
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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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Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.
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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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Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.
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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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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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A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.
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A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions.
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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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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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Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an imposter.
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Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls.
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Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires.
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