"Humankind is that creature who lost a part of its animal instinct in order to gain access to "desire," as it is called. Once their natural needs are… - René Girard

The essence of desire is to have no essential goal. Truly to desire, we must have recourse to people about us; we have to desire their desires.

Even in the most closed cultures men believe that they are free and open to the universal; their differential character makes the narrowest cultural fields seem inexhaustible from within. Anything that compromises this illusion terrifies us and stirs up the immemorial tendency to persecution.

seria ilusório imaginarmo-nos com dimensão para criticar Shakespeare. Pode acontecer, ao contrário, que seja o inverso. Em vez de tentar julgá-lo de um ponto de vista 'moderno' necessariamente superior, deveríamos tentar encontrar algumas das suas intenções maiores que manifestamente nos escapam. Só podemos tê-las perdido — Deus sabe onde e quando. A menos, bem entendido, que estejam ainda por desvendar

He thought against Napoleon, in both senses of the word. See how fruitful resentment can be, and how it can make one