If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
Do you become spiritual by performing ceremonies and rituals…? Ceremonies and rituals sometimes give a certain sensation, so-called uplift. But they are repetitious, and every sensation that is repeated soon wearies of itself.
The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender’s inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for everyone else the proper pleasure of ritual.
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.
