“The inexplicable is always terrifying. But it wouldn't be so frightening if you stopped to ask yourself whether there's ever been any reason why you should have been at the top... Oh, come, Peter, smile, I'm only kidding. One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor.”
“One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor.”
“People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been--for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy.”
“The question of whether one alleges the Superiority or Inferiority of any given race is irrelevant; racism has only one psychological root: the racist's sense of his own Inferiority.”
“You still love me - even if there's one expression of it that you will always feel and want, but will not give me no longer. I'm still what I was, and you'll always see it, and you'll always grant me the same response, even if there's a greater one that you grant another man. No matter what you feel for him, it will not change what you feel for me, and it won't treason to either, because it comes from the same root, it's the same payment in answer to the same values.”
“When you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately, that is to love people without any standard, to love them regardless of whether they have any value or virtue, you are asked to love nobody.”
“A battle? What battle? I hold the whip hand. I don't fight the disarmed." "Are they? They have a weapon against you. It's their only weapon, but it's a terrible one. Ask yourself what it is, some time." "Where do you see any evidence of it?" "In the unforgivable fact that you're as unhappy as you are.”