— Page 23 of 65 pages.
“Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They are not like aches or wounds; they are more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there is not enough material.”
“From this arises the following question: whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse. The answer is that one would like to be both the one and the other, but because they are difficult to combine, it is far better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.”
“Man’s life cannot “be lived” by repeating the pattern of his species; he must live. Man is the only animal that can be bored, that can be discontented, that can feel evicted from paradise. Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape. He cannot go back to the prehuman state of harmony with nature; he must proceed to develop his reason until he becomes the master of nature, and of himself.”
“I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy — I don’t disparage envy but I don’t accept it as legitimately my master.”
“The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endlessly repeated rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which it may be optimistic about the future of mankind, but in itself it signifies not a little.”
“The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.”
“When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hopes seem hardly worth having, just mount a bicycle and go for a good spin down the road, without thought of anything but the ride you are taking.”
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
“A whole lifetime was too short to bring out, the full flavour; to extract every ounce of pleasure, every shade of meaning.”