"C’est cette présence de l’ordre supérieur dans l’inférieur sous forme d’un infiniment petit."
"What evil violates is not goodness, for goodness is inviolate; only a degraded good can be violated."
"Le bien est pour nous un néant puisque aucune chose n’est bonne. Mais ce néant n’est pas irréel. Tout ce qui existe, comparé à lui, est irréel."
"Ecarter les croyances combleuses de vides, adoucisseuses des amertumes. Celle à l’immortalité. Celle à l’utilité des péchés : etiam peccata. Celle à l’ordre providentiel des événements—bref les « consolations » qu’on cherche ordinairement dans la religion."
"On se porte vers une chose parce qu’on croit qu’elle est bonne, et on y reste enchaîne parce qu’elle est devenue nécessaire."
"Perdre l’illusion de la possession du temps. S’incarner."
"Croire qu’on s’élève parce qu’en gardant les mêmes bas penchants (exemple : désir de l’emporter sur autrui) on leur a donné des objets élevés."
"Le chair est dangereuse pour autant qu’elle se refuse à aimer Dieu, mais aussi pour autant qu’elle se mêle indiscrètement de l’aimer."
"La volonté de combattre un préjugé … constitue un effort tout à fait stérile pour s’en débarrasser. La lumière de l’attention en pareille affaire est seule efficace, et elle n’est pas compatible avec une intention polémique."
"La lumière de l’attention … n’est pas compatible avec une intention polémique."
"All the Freudian system is impregnated with the prejudice which it makes it its mission to fight—the prejudice that everything sexual is vile."
"We do not have to acquire humility. There is humility in us—only we humiliate ourselves before false gods."
"Everything which is vile or second-rate in us revolts against purity and needs, in order to save its own life, to soil this purity."
"The beautiful is that which we cannot wish to change."
"To assume power over is to soil. To possess is to soil."
"To love purely is to consent to distance, it is to adore the distance between ourselves and that which we love."
"It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves."
"To wish to escape from solitude is cowardice."
"A certain inferior kind of virtue is good’s degraded image, of which we have to repent, and of which it is more difficult to repent than evil—The Pharisee and the Publican."
"That which is the direct opposite of an evil never belongs to the order of higher good. It is often scarcely any higher than evil! Examples: theft and the bourgeois respect for property, adultery and the ‘respectable woman,’ the savings bank and waste, lying and ‘sincerity.’"
"Good considered on the level of evil and measured against it as one opposite against another is good of the penal code order. Above there is a good which, in a sense, bears more resemblance to evil than to this low form of good."
"Most people have a sense of duty about doing certain things that are bad and others that are good. The same man feels it to be a duty to sell for the highest price he can and not to steal, etc. Good for such people is on the level of evil, it is a good without light."
"The false God changes suffering into violence. The true God changes violence into suffering."
"The crime which is latent in us, we must inflict on ourselves."
"The most criminal weakness is infinitely less dangerous than the very slightest treason, even thought this should be confined to a purely inward movement of thought lasting no more than an instant."