The most important experiences a man can have are those that take him to the very limit; that is the only way we learn, because it requires all our courage.
To a commonplace man of limited intellect, for instance, nothing is simpler than to imagine himself an original character, and to revel in that belief without the slightest misgiving.
Man is very well defended against himself... The actual fortress is inaccessible, even invisible to him, unless his friends and enemies play the traitor and conduct him in by a secret path.
We don't have a lot of men on stage doing flamboyant or theatrical. We have a lot of female pop stars doing it, but where are the guys? Where's the classic pop-rock showman?
Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.
We are afraid of love because Love is a small death. Love requires that we should surrender, and we don't want to surrender at all. We would like the OTHER to surrender, we would like the other to be a slave. But the same is the desire from the other side: man wants the woman to be a slave; and of course the woman also wants the same, the SAME desire is there. Their methods of enslaving each other may be different, but the desire is the same.
The most unambiguous sign that a person holds men in low esteem is this, that he either acknowledges them merely as means to his ends or does not acknowledge them at all.
No man has a right to disturb the public peace, by personally resisting the execution of a law however bad. He ought to acquiesce, using at the same time the utmost powers of his reason, to promote its repeal.