The pinnacle of human consciousness must be the rejection of unhealthy competition, war and violence.

The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides.

It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities.

Denial and rejection is one of the most powerful weapons that can turn a man into an evil.

That same moment he ordered the hateful portrait taken out. But that did not calm his inner agitation: all his feelings and all his being were shaken to their depths, and he came to know that terrible torment which, by way of a striking exception, sometimes occurs in nature, when a weak talent strains to show itself on too grand a scale and fails; that torment which gives birth to great things in a youth, but, in passing beyond the border of dream, turns into a fruitless yearning; that dreadful torment which makes a man capable of terrible evildoing.

I knew that I was talented. I was positive about that. I wasn__ sure exactly what I was talented at, but I was ambitious enough to wait it out and see what turned up.