I do love compliments, yet I'm often embarrassed to say what I think to the person when I get a compliment. I so often feel that they have not gone far enough.
Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions of life -- the true civilizing process that makes life more and more secure -- had gone steadily on to a climax... And the harvest was what I saw.
Even the most despotic government cannot stand except for the consent of the governed.... Immediately the subject ceases to fear the despotic force, his power is gone.
Long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.
It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words.
This pleasure comes precisely from the sharpest awareness of your own degradation; from the knowledge that you have gone to the utmost limit; that it is despicable, yet cannot be otherwise; that you no longer have any way out; that you will never become a different man.