Of what avail are my loftiest thoughts if I have ceased to exist?” there are some will ask; to whom others, it may be, will answer, “What becomes of … - Maurice Maeterlinck

We have taken for a long time a rather foolish pride in believing ourselves to be miraculous beings, unique and wonderfully open to chance, probably fallen from another world, without clear ties to the rest of life and, in any case, endowed with an unusual, incomparable, awful ability. It is far preferable to be nowhere near so prodigious, for we have learned that prodigies soon vanish in the normal evolution of nature. It is much more consoling to observe that we follow the same path as the soul of this great world, that we have the same ideas, the same hopes, the same trials, and — were it not for our specific dream of justice and pity — almost the same feelings. It is much more calming to assure ourselves that, to better our lot, to utilize the forces, the opportunities, the laws of matter, we employ methods exactly the same as those that the soul uses to illuminate and order its unruly and unconscious areas; that there are no other methods, that we are in the midst of truth, that we are in our rightful place and at home in this universe molded by unknown substances, whose thought is not impenetrable and hostile but analogous or apposite to our own.

What are we to do now? Must we hate the enemy to the end of time? The burden of hatred is the heaviest that man can bear upon this earth; and we should faint under the weight of it. On the other hand, we do not wish once more to be the dupes and victims of confidence and love.

سئل حكيم : هل هناك أقبح من البخل ؟
قال : نعم الكريم إذا تحدث بإحسانه لمن أحسن إليه.