Where virtue is, sensibility is the ornament and becoming attire of virtue. On certain occasions it may almost be said to become virtue. But sensibility and all the amiable qualities may likewise become, and too often have become, the panders of vice and the instruments of seduction.
Be passive. In your passivity, God comes. Be feminine. In your femininity, God comes. Have you not watched it? Buddha looks very feminine, Krishna looks very feminine. Why? - because it is simply a metaphor. They have been depicted as feminine, graceful, to show that that is their inner quality - receptivity. When you are doing something you are being aggressive. When you are not doing anything you are non-aggressive. And God cannot be conquered; you can only allow him to conquer you.
We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with those virtues that are likely to benefit ourselves. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets.
He wa'n't no common dog, he wa'n't no mongrel; he was a composite. A composite dog is a dog that is made up of all the valuable qualities that's in the dog breed-kind of a syndicate; and a mongrel is made up of all riffraff that's left over.
A central notion in the Affordable Care Act was we had an inefficient system with a lot of waste that didn't also deliver the kind of quality that was needed that often put health care providers in a box where they wanted to do better for their patients, but financial incentives were skewed the other way... We don't need to reinvent the wheel; you're already figuring out what works to reduce infections in hospitals or help patients with complicated needs.
All tastes have the quality of being in some way artificial and invented. The secret of life is to have enough detachment from your tastes and your values to see that they are a little bit absurd.
We all have a thirst for wonder. It's a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I'm saying is, you don't have to make stories up, you don't have to exaggerate. There's wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature's a lot better at inventing wonders than we are.
I am perfectly confident that I could never adequately convey to any other human being the precise reasons why I continue to refrain from suicide - the reasons, that is, why I still find existence enough of a compensation to atone for its dominantly burthensome quality.