They wanted genuine intimacy, but they could not get even normally near to anyone, because they scorned to take the first steps, they scorned the triviality which forms common human intercourse.
It is a mark of wisdom not to kick away the very step from which we have risen higher. The removal of one step from a staircase brings down the whole of it.
Whenever the strength of a belief strongly steps into the foreground, we must infer a certain weakness of demonstrability and the improbability of that belief.
Social progress takes effect through the replacement of all institutions by new ones; and since every institution involves the recognition of the duty of conforming to it, progress must involve the repudiation of an established duty at every step.