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His obedience is real since he really and truly fulfills his mission, since he runs real risks in order to carry out the beloved’s orders. But, on the other hand, it is imaginary because he submits only to a creature of his mind.
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I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.
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I know nothing, I am neither woman nor girl; I have been living in a dream and when someone kissed me, it made me want to laugh. Now I am here before you, it seems as though I have just awakened and it is morning.
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Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away.... To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.
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I grasp at each second, trying to suck it dry: nothing happens which I do not seize, which I do not fix forever in myself, nothing, neither the fugitive tenderness of those lovely eyes, nor the noises of the street, nor the false dawn of early morning: and even so the minute passes and I do not hold it back, I like to see it pass.
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I wanted pure love: foolishness; to love one another is to hate a common enemy: I will thus espouse your hatred. I wanted Good: nonsense; on this earth and in these times, Good and Bad are inseparable: I accept to be evil in order to become good.
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He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.
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Similarly, individual acts of aristocratic generosity do not eliminate pauperism; they perpetuate it.
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Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?
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I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.
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Generally speaking there is no irreducible taste or inclination. They all represent a certain appropriative choice of being. It is up to existential psychoanalysis to compare and classify them. Ontology abandons us here; it has merely enabled us to determine the ultimate ends of human reality, its fundamental possibilities, and the value which haunts it.
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Don’t you feel the same way? When I cannot see myself, even though I touch myself, I wonder if I really exist.
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Karsky: I met your father last week. Are you still interested in hearing how he is doing?Hugo: No.Karsky: It is very probable that you will be responsible for his death.Hugo: It is virtually certain that he is responsible for my life. We are even.
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The consciousness of being betrayed is to the collective consciousness of a sacred group what a certain form of schizophrenia is to the individual…it is a form of madness.
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As for us, my little friend, we entered the Communist Party because we were tired of dying of hunger.
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He is dead, and my hatred has died with him.
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The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.
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Abjection is a methodological conversion, like Cartesian doubt and Husserlian epoche: it establishes the world as a closed system which consciousness regards from without, in the manner of divine understanding.
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It is too early to love. We will buy the right to do so by shedding blood.
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Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
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Man cannot will unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.
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There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.
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It is for the sake of order that I seduced Clytemnestra, for the sake of order that I killed my king. I wanted for order to rule and that it rule through me. I have lived without desire, without love, without hope: I made order. Oh! terrible and divine passion!
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Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.