“Therefore the sage desires what (other men) do not desire, and does not prize things difficult to get; he learns what (other men) do not learn, and turns back to what the multitude of men have passed by.”

“What is a man?What is a woman?Why are men and women attracted to each other?Why do they desire each other?Love...what is it?”

“It is only by having desire thwarted, and thereby learning to control it — in other words, by becoming civilized — that men become fully human.”

“Man wants what he cannot have, or what is difficult to procure, or what he must wade through the blood of other men to get. So with collectors.”

“Nothing that we despise in other men is inherently absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don't do, and more in light of what they suffer.”

“To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think makes men martyrs or reformers-- or both.”