“What dreadful misfortune awaited them among the savage hordes intoxicated with blood?”

“There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”

“That which intoxicates, the sensually ecstatic, the sudden surprise, the urge to be profoundly stirred at any price -- dreadful tendencies!”

“Nor dread nor hope attendA dying animal;A man awaits his endDreading and hoping all.”

“There are people who from early on reveal a great talent for misfortune. Unhappiness pummels at them like a stoning, every other day, and they accept it with a resigned sigh. Others, meanwhile, have a peculiar propensity for the happiness. Faced with an abyss the latter are attracted by its blueness, the former by its intoxication.”

“In the savage horde the most vagabond, as well as in the most civilized nations of Europe, man is only what he is made to be by external circumstances; he is necessarily elevated by his equals; he contracts from them his habits and his wants; his ideas are no longer his own; he enjoys, from the enviable prerogative of his species, a capacity of developing his understanding bu the power of initiation, and the influence of society.”