In saying no to progress, it is not the future which they condemn, but themselves. They give themselves a melancholy disease; they inoculate themselves with the past. There is but one way of refusing tomorrow, that is to die.
Ego is the movement of the mind toward objects of perception in the form of grasping, and away from objects in the form of aversion. This fundamentally is all the ego is. This movement of grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate 'me,' and in turn the sense of 'me' strengthens itself this way.
Were Patrick Henry to return to earth and look around on the vast economic order of the day, he might revise his observation and merely say ‘Give me death’-the alternative being manifestly impossible under modern conditions.
Hotels are the only proper places for lecturers. When I am ill-natured I so enjoy the freedom of a hotel where I can ring up a domestic and give him a quarter and then break furniture over him.
Unless a person decides that `Whatever the cost, I want just to be myself. Condemned, unaccepted, losing respectability - everything is okay but I cannot pretend anymore to be somebody else`... This decision and this declaration - this declaration of freedom, freedom from the weight of the crowd - gives birth to your natural being, to your individuality. Then you don`t need any mask. Then you can be simply yourself, just as you are. And the moment you can be just as you are, there is tremendous peace that passeth understanding.